A strange discovery

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A stranjge discover

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A Strange Discovery

A Strange Discovery

By
Charles Romyn Dake

New York
H. Ingalls Kimball

Mdcccxdx

Entered according to Act of

Congress in the year MDCCCXCIX

by

Charles Romyn Dake

at the Office of the Librarian of Congress

in Washington

How We Found
Dirk Peters

The First Chapter

IT was once my good fortune to assist
in a discovery of some importance to
lovers of literature, and to searchers
after the new and wonderful. As
nearly a quarter of a century has since
elapsed, and as two others shared in the
discovery, it may seem to the reader strange
that the general public has been kept in
ignorance of an event apparently so full of
interest. Yet this silence is quite explica-
ble; for of the three participants none has
heretofore written for publication; and of
my two associates, one is a quiet, retiring
man, the other is erratic and forgetful.

It is also possible that the discovery did
not at the time impress either my compan-
ions or myself as having that importance and
widespread interest which I have at last come
to believe it really possesses. In any view of
the case, there are reasons, personal to my-
self, why it was less my duty than that of

3

4 A Strange Discovery

either of the others to place on record the
facts of the discovery. Had either of them,
in all these years, in ever so brief a manner,
done so, I should have remained forever
silent.

The narrative which it is my purpose
now to put in written form, I have at vari-
ous times briefly or in part related to one
and another of my intimate friends; but
they all mistook my facts for fancies, and
good-naturedly complimented me on iny
story-telling powers — ^which was certainly
not flattering to my qualifications as an his-
torian.

With this explanation, and this extenua-
tion of what some persons may think an
inexcusable and almost criminal delay, I
shall proceed.

In the year 1877 I was compelled by cir-
cumstances to visit the States. At that
time, as at the present, my home was near
Newcastle-upon-Tyne. My father, then re-
cently deceased, had left, in course of set-
tlement in America, business interests in-
volving a considerable pecuniary invest-
ment, of which I hoped a large part might
be recovered. My lawyer, for reasons
which seemed to me sufficient, advised that
the act of settlement should not be dele-
gated; and I decided to leave at once for

A Strange Discovery 5

the United States. Ten days later I
reached New York, where I remained for
a day or two and then proceeded westward.
In St. Louis I met some of the persons in-
terested in my business. There the whole
transaction took such form that a final set-
tlement depended wholly upon the agree-
ment between a certain man and myself; but,
fortunately for the fate of this narrative, the
man was not in St. Louis. He was one of
those wealthy so-called " kings " which
abound in America — in this case a " coal
king." I was told that he possessed a really
palatial residence in St. Louis — where he
did not dwell; and a less pretentious dwell-
ing directly in the coal-fields, where, for
the most of his time, he did reside. I
crossed the Mississippi River into Southern
Illinois, and very soon found him. He was
a plain, honest business man; we did not
split hairs, and within a week I had in my
pocket London exchange for something like
£20,000, he had in his pocket a transfer of
my interest in certain coal-fields and a cer-
tain railroad, and we were both satisfied.

And now, having explained how I came
to be in surroundings to me so strange, any
further mention of business, or of money in-
terests, shall not, in the course of this nar-
rative, again appear.

6 A Strange Discovery

I had arrived at the town of Bellevue, in
Southern Illinois, on a bright June morning,
and housed myself in an old-fashioned, four-
story brick hotel, the Loomis House, in
which the proprietor, a portly, ruddy-faced,
trumpet-voiced man, assigned to me an
apartment — a spacious corner room, with
three windows looking upon the main thor-
oughfare and two upon a side street, and a
smaller room adjoining.

Here, even before the time came when I
might have returned to England had I so
desired, I acquired quite a home-like feeling.
The first two days of my stay, as I had trav-
elled rapidly and was somewhat wearied, I
allotted to rest, and left my room for little
else than the customary tri-daily visits to the
table d'hote.

During these first two days I made many
observations from my windows, and asked
numberless questions of the bell-boy. I
learned that a certain old, rambling, two-
story building directly across the side street
was the hotel mentioned by Dickens in his
" American Notes," and in the lower pas-
sage-way of which he met the Scotch phre-
nologist, " Doctor Crocus." The bell-boy
whom I have mentioned was the factotum
of the Loomis House, being, in an emer-
gency, hack-driver, porter, runner — all by

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A Strange Discovery 7

turns, and nothing long at a time. He was
a quaint genius, named Arthur; and his po-
sition, on the whole, was somewhat more
elevated than that of our English " Boots."
During these two days I became quite an
expert in the invention of immediate per-
sonal wants; for, as I continued my studies
of local life from the windows of my apart-
ment, I frequently desired information, and
would then ring my bell, hoping that Ar-
thur would be the person to respond, as he
usually was. He was an extremely profane
youth, but profane in a quiet, drawling,
matter-of-fact manner. He was frequently
semi-intoxicated by noon, and sometimes
quite inarticulate by 9 p.m. ; but I never saw
him with his bodily equilibrium seriously
impaired — in plainer words, I never saw him
stagger. He openly confessed to a weak-
ness for an occasional glass, but would have
repelled with scorn, perhaps with blows, an
insinuation attributing to him excess in that
direction. True, he referred to times in his
life when he had been " caught " — meaning
that the circumstances were on those occa-
sions such as to preclude any successful de-
nial of intoxication; but these occasions, it
was impHed, dated back to the period of his
giddy youth.

With little to occupy my mind (I had the

8 A Strange Discovery

St. Louis dailies, one of which was the best
newspaper — excepting, of course, our Times
— that I have ever read; but my trunks did
not arrive until a day or two later, and I was
without my favorite books), I became really
interested in studying the persons whom I
saw passing and repassing the hotel, or stop-
ping to converse on the opposite street-cor-
ners; and after forming surmises concerning
those of them who most interested me, I
would ask Arthur who they were, and then
compare with my own opinions the truth as
furnished by him.

There was a quiet, well-dressed young
man, who three or four times 'each day
passed along the side street. Regarding
him, I had formed and altered my opinion
several times; but I finally determined that
he was a clergyman in recent orders and just
come to town. When I asked Arthur
whether I was correct in my surmise, he an-
swered :

" Wrong again — that is, on the fellow's
business " — I had not before made an er-
roneous surmise; but on the contrary, had
shown, great penetration in determining, at
a single glance for each of them, two lawyers
and a banker — " Yes, sir, wrong again; and
right again, too. His name's Doctor Bain-
bridge, and he's fool enough to come here

A Strange Discovery

'd>

with the town just alive with other saw-
bones. He's some kind of a 'pathy doctor,
come here to learn us how to get well on
sugar and wind — or pretty near that bad.
He don't give no medicine worth mention-
in', he keeps his boss so fat he can't trot,
and he ain't got no wife to mend his clothes.
They say he's gettin' along, though; and
old farmer Vagary's boy that had 'em, told
me he was good on fits — but I don't beHeve
that, for the boy had the worst fit in his life
after he told me. The doctor said — so they
tell — as that was jest what he expected, and
that he was glad the fit came so hard, for it
show'd the medicine was workin'."

My attention was particularly attracted to
a man who daily, in fact almost hourly, stood
at an opposite corner, and who frequently ar-
rived, or drove away, in a buggy drawn by
two rather small, black, spirited horses. He
was a tall, lithe, dark-complexioned man,
with black eyes, rather long black hair, and a
full beard; extremely restless, and constantly
moving back and forth. He addressed many
passers-by, a fair proportion of whom
stopped to exchange a word with him. In
the latter instance, however, the exchange
was scarcely equitable, as, he did the talking,
and his remarks, judging by his gestures of
head and hand, were generally emphatic.

lo A Strange Discovery

One of the apparently favorite positions
which he assumed was to throw an arm
around the corner gas-post, and swing his
body back and forth, occasionally, when
alone, taking a swing entirely around the
post. Another favorite position was to stand
with his fists each boring into the hollow of
his back over the corresponding hip, with his
chest and shoulders thrown well back, and
his head erect, looking steadily off into the
distance. With regard to this man's sta-
tion in life, I took little credit to myself for a
correct guess; for, in addition to other aids
to correct guessing, the store-room on that
corner was occupied by an apothecary.
When I asked Arthur whether the man was
not a physician, " Yes, sir," he replied;
" physician, surgeon, and obstetrician;
George F. Castleton, A.M., M.D. He ought
to get a dry-goods box and a torch-light,
and sell ' Hindoo Bitters ' in the Public-
square. If you jest want to die quick, you
know where to go to get it. That fellow
salivated me till my teeth can't keep quiet.
Oh, he knows it all! Medicine ain't enough
to fill his intellecty. He runs the Gov-
ernment and declares war to suit himself.
' Moves around a great deal,' you say?
Well, I believe you; but when you see his
idees move around you'll quit sighing about

A Strange Discovery n

his body. Why, sir, that man in a cam-
paign changes his politics every day; no-
body ever yet caught up with his religion;
and besides, he's a prophet. You jest get
back home without touchin' him, if you love
me, now, please do."

All of this was said in a quiet, instructive
tone, without much show of feeling even
when the teeth were mentioned, and only
such emphasis as has been indicated by my
italics. Arthur's advice for me to get home
without " touching " the doctor, I had no
intention of following. My curiosity regard-
ing the man was aroused, and I had deter-
mined, if possible, to know him. So far as
one could be influenced from a third-story
window, I was favorably impressed with him.
I judged him to be superlatively erratic, but
without an atom of real evil in his being. I
had observed from my window an incident
that gave me a glance into the man's heart.
A poor, dilapidated, distressed negro, evi-
dently seeking help, had come running up
to him as he stood near his buggy, at the
corner; and the manner in which he pushed
the negro into the buggy, himself followed,
and then started ofif at a break-neck speed,
left no doubt in my mind that the doctor.had
a heart as large as the whole world. Once
or twice during the long, warm afternoons.

12 A strange Discovery

his words came to me through the open win-
dows. I was aware that his almost preter-
naturally bright, quick eyes flashed a glance
or two at me as I once or twice stepped
rather close to an open window looking out
over the lower roof-tops beyond ; and I felt
that he had given me a niche in his mind, as
I had him in mine. I wondered if he had
formed mental estimates of my status, and
if so whether he had attempted to cor-
roborate them as did I mine, through
Arthur. Once I heard him say to a small,
craven-looking man, apparently feeble in
mind and in body, with red, contracted,
watering eyes, " Yes, sir, if I had been Sam
Tilden, the blood in these streets would have
touched your stirrups " — the little man had
no stirrups — " This country is trembling
over an abyss deeper'n the infernal regions.
Ha, ha! What a ghastly burlesque on hu-
man freedom ! Now, hark you, Pickles " —
the small man was not only listening, but, I
could imagine, trembling. He would now
and then look furtively around, as if fearing
that somebody else might hear the doctor,
and that war would begin — " listen to me :
' Hell has no fury like a nation scorned.' "
Here Doctor Castleton shot a glance at the
little man, to see whether or not so fine a
stroke was appreciated, and whether his

A Strange Discovery 13

quotation was or was not passing as origi-
nal. " I repeat, ' Hell has no fui-y like a na-
tion scorned ' — Nation, you hear, Pickles —
nation, not woman. There is just one thing
to save this crumbling Republic; give us
more paper money — greenbacks on green-
backs, mountain high. Let the Government
rent by the month or lease by the year every
printing-press in the country — let the ma-
chinery sweetly hum as the sheets of treas-
ury-notes fall in cascades to the floor, to be
cut apart, packed in bundles, and sent to any
citizen who wants them on his own unen-
dorsed note — zmendorsed. Pickles, and at
two per cent. ! Ever study logic. Pickles?
No! Well, no matter; my brain's full
enough of the stuff for both of us. If the
American citizen is honest — ^v\'hich I opine
that he is — the scheme will work like a
charm; if he is dwhonest — which God for-
bid, and let no man assert — then let the
country sink — and the sooner the better. I
pity the imbecile that can't see this point.
The people — and is this country for the peo-
ple, or is it not? — follow me. Pickles: the
people obtain plenty of money, the stores
get it, the factories and importers get it, and
commerce hums." Here the doctor was for
a moment diverted by some objective im-
pression; and without a word of excuse to

14 ^ Strange Discovery

the little man, he swung himself into his bug-
gy, which stood waiting, and drove rapidly
away; whilst the diminutive man, after a
moment of weak indecision, shufHed ofif
down the street. I later learned that these
talks of Doctor Castleton's were, as regards
the element of verity, thrown off as writers
of fiction throw ofif fancies. Sometimes he
defended opinions that were in fierce conflict
with the ideas of his auditors; but he gen-
erally talked to please them, frequently as-
suming as his own, and in exaggerated form,
the hobbies, notions, or desires of his audi-
tors. In the incident just recorded, the doc-
tor probably had not, as a matter of fact,
been stating his real opinions, though for the
moment he may have imagined that he was
an uncompromising " Paper-money man "
or " Greenbacker," as a member of one of
the minor political parties of the day was
termed : the little man was poor, and Doctor
Castleton had simply been drawing for him a
picture of delights — at least, so I conject-
ured. This propensity of the doctor some-
times led to startling surprises and results,
and, once at least, to a discovery of weighty
consequence — as we shall soon perceive.

It was novelty for me, and under the cir-
cumstances often quite refreshing, to wit-
ness the manner in which Americans treated

A Straitge Discovery 15

the mighty subjects of life, and spoke of the
great and powerful persons of the earth. It
was an abundant source of entertainment for
me to ask almost anybody with whom I hap-
pened to be conversing, for his opinion on
some great subject or of some noted person-
age; for the reply was always to me unique,
sometimes very amusing, and not infre-
quently instructive. On the way for the
second time from our evening meal to my
room, I stopped for a moment in the " Gen-
tlemen's sitting-room," where I in part over-
heard a conversation between an elderly and
a middle-aged man. I afterward learned
that the younger man was a lawyer, by name
Lill; that he was well known throughout
the State, a man of cultivation, very conven-
tional in his private life, but an unequivocal
dissenter on almost every great social ques-
tion ; a man of high honor, and unquestion-
able personal habits, for whom exalted pub-
lic oflfice had often waited if only he could
have modified his expressed opinions to less
inharmony with those of men who held the
reins of power. It seemed that these two
men had not met for a year or more; and as
I entered the room they were comparing ex-
periences, in a leisurely, confidential, sympa-
thetic way. As I came within hearing, the
lawyer had just started in afresh, after a

i6 A Strange Discovery

laugh and a pause. Settling-down his feat-
ures, and assuming a more-news-to-be-told
manner, with a pinch of fine-cut tobacco be-
tween finger and thumb ready to go into his
mouth, and leaning slightly forward to keep
the tobacco-dust from his shirt-front, he
said, " Well, David, I read the Bible through-
again last winter, and I must continue to
think it a very immoral book. Its teaching
is really bad. Why, sir, what would you

think of such d d outrageous teaching

if anybody were at this time to promulgate
it with an implication of any practical rela-
tion to present events? " And so he con-
tinued, somewhat, though not greatly, to
the horror of his companion, who seemed to
be a Christian — at least by descent.

On another day, after the mid-day meal,
as I again entered this room, I observed a
new-comer in conversation with what I took
to be a small delegation of Bellevue business
men. I was afterward presented to this new
arrival, when I learned that his name was
Rowell — General Rowell; a name which I
thought I had seen in the newspapers at
home. He was a large man of prepossessing
appearance, and gave me the impression of
considerable mental force and activity. I
heard him say to his visitors — the words ap-
parently closing a conference : " Yes, gen-

A Strange Discovery 17

tlemen, if I come to Bellevue, and we build
a nail mill in your city, I ask only five years
time in which to make our mill the largest
nail-works in the world." For a moment, as
I heard this remark, it passed through my
mind that I was in the presence of an excel-
lent example of an amusing type of Ameri-
can life; but the momentary thought was
erroneous. This man was one of a type of
American — well, of American promoters, I
will say — the business plans of whom,
though mammoth and audacious, rarely fail
— the genuine article of which the Colonel
Sellerses are but pitiful imitators. In this
instance, the promise was fulfilled, with a
year or two to spare.

The right to express personal opinion was
looked upon as one of the fruits of '76, and
the value of such opinion seemed to be meas-
ured almost wholly on its merits — even to a
laughable extent. For instance, this lawyer,
or Doctor Castleton, or any other American
whom I met, whatever he might privately
have thought on the subject, would not for
a moment have claimed that his opinion was
innately superior to that of, for instance, the
factotum, Arthur. A man seemed to have,
also, an inalienable right to be a snob ; but
I saw in America only one man who utilized
that privilege. I heard an Ex-Governor of

i8 A Strange Discovery

the State express himself on this subject by
the concise remark, " We have no law here
against a man making a d d fool of him-
self." Its " Abe " for the President of the
Republic, " Dick " for the Governor of the
State, and so on, all the way through. But
no one should imagine that admiration as
well as respect for the truly great of the land
is less than it is where a man with four names
and two inherited titles receives greater
homage than does one with only three names
and one title. Customs differ in different
lands — a trite remark; but it is about all that
can be said on the subject : after all, human
feeling is not extremely different in different
lands, when we once get back of mere form.

I might illustrate a part of my statement
by relating an incident which occurred on
my third day in the hotel, and just prior to
my emergence from seclusion into the midst
of the busy little city. I was in my sitting-
room, and Arthur had brought in a pitcher
of ice-water, placing it on a table. Then he
paused and looked toward me, as if expect-
ing the usual question on some subject con-
nected with my surroundings. But at the
time I had nothing to ask. After a moment
of quiet, Arthur spoke :

" Did you see the Prince lately? " he in-
quired.

A Strange Discovery 19

I had by this time grown so accustomed
to Arthur's mode of thought and lingual ex-
pression, that even this question did not
greatly surprise me. I supposed that the
query was made on the first suggestion of
an alert mind desirous of starting a little
agreeable conversation, and wishing to be
sociable with a " two-room " guest. He im-
mediately continued :

" I hope he's well. I met him, you know,
when he was over here, sev'ral years ago,
gettin' idees for his kingdom."

I began to feel amused. Arthur was not a
liar, and anything but a bore : he struck me
as being truthful on all subjects except that
of his bibulous weakness — a subject on
which he was, perhaps naturally, not able to
form accurate notions.

" Where did you meet His Highness,
Arthur? " I asked.

" Oh, in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. I was
only eight then. They wouldn't let boys in
the hotel to see him, and there was so many
big-wigs around the young man, I couldn't
get to see him at first. Btit after a while they
all got out in front of the hotel, to get into
their carriages. They had to wait a few min-
utes, but I couldn't get in front to see him.
The hotel hall was empty by that time, and
everybody was looking at the Prince; so I

20 A strange Discovery

hurried through the barber-shop into the
side hall; slipped along into the main hall,
to the main entrance. I was not more than
ten or twelve feet from the Prince, but I
was at the back of the crowd; so I jest got
down on all-fours, and crawled in between
their legs. I got clear up to the Prince, but
a big man stood on each side of him, right
close up. For a minute I thought I was
worse off than ever. Then I noticed that the
Prince had his legs a little separate — ^his
knees were maybe six inches apart, with one
leg standin' ahead of the other. I was a lit-
tle fellow, even for eight; and I saw my
chance. I ran my head in between his knees
and twisted my body and neck so as to look
right up into his face, as he looked down to
see what rubbed against him. He looked
kind of funny when he saw my face down
there, but not a bit mad; and he could easy
have hurt me, but he didn't. I drew back
my head so quick that nobody else saw me.
I often wonder if the Prince remembers me;
and I wish you'd ask him when you go home.
Since I grew up, I've often felt ashamed to
think I did it. If you think of it, and it ain't
too much trouble, please tell him that we
know better in the United States than to do
such things, but that I was little then, and I
must have been ignorant of ettiket, my

A Strange Discovery 21

father bein' dead, and I havin' to stay out of
school to help make money. If you will, say
I hope there's no feelin'; and when you
think of it, drop me a line, please."

The Second Chapter

A WEEK had elapsed since my arrival
in Bellevue. I had been intro-
duced to Doctor Castleton, and
had exchanged a few words with
him. I had also listened to sev-
eral of his street-corner talks, and my inter-
est, in him from day to day had increased.
This interest must have been reciprocal, for
he seemed to look for my coming; but
then, in whom was he not interested? I
liked him for his real goodness, was enter-
tained by his erratic ways, and admired his
intellectual brightness. Never before had I
come in contact with a mind at once so spon-
taneous and so versatile. It was perhaps his
most striking peculiarity, that he seemed al-
ways to be looking for something startling
to occur; and in a dearth of the new and sen-
sational from without, he produced excite-
ment for the community from within. The
weather, for instance, was growing warmer,

22

A Strange Discovery 23

and the summer was apparently to be a sul-
try one : hence, before the season was ended
we were to look for the most sweeping epi-
demics of disease; a comet had been sighted
by one of our comet-hunters, and we were
all to say later whether or not it would have
been better if we'd never been born, and so
on, and so on. His mind teemed with a pre-
science of the plans and plots of statesmen,
of bureaucrats, and of " plutocrats " : Ger-
many was going to overshadow Europe,
and "grind all beneath it like a glacier";
" France was about to strike back at Prussia,
and the blow would be felt in the trembling
of the earth from Pole to Pole." Yet this,
I thought, Avas to the man himself all fiction
— the froth on the limpid and sparkling
depths beneath — the overflow of a bright,
undisciplined mind amid the stagnation of
a country town. This strange man would
not intentionally have brought actual in-
jury upon even an enemy — if he ever had a
real enemy; he was at heart, and generally
in practice, as kind as a gentle woman. But
he seemed unable to exist without mental
super-activity; and the sympathy of his fel-
lows in his mental gyrations was to him a
constant necessity. Few of the persons
whom he habitually met and who had leis-
ure were able to discuss with him the books

24 A Strange Discovery

he read, and not many of them cared even
to hear him talk of his fresh Hteraiy acces-
sions. He had, long ago, and many times,
described for the benefit of the habitues of
the corners, the career of Alexander and of
Napoleon, explaining what they had done,
and how they had done it, and why; with
instances in which the execution of their
plans had met with failure, the reasons for
that failure, and the methods by which, if he
had been them, success might easily have
been attained. An ancient-looking apothe-
cary, with an old " Rebel bushwhacker "
and a painter out of work who " loafed " of
evenings in, or in front of, the corner apothe-
cary shop, had stood gap-mouthed at these
recitations until the mine of wonders had
been to the last grain exhausted. Still, ex-
citement must be procured for them. The
doctor could better have dispensed for a day
with food for the body, than to have fore-
gone excitement for the mind ; and if a ma-
jority of his auditors were also to be grati-
fied, the subject-matter must be strong and
novel, must be boldly produced, and, by
preference, should be of local interest. As
the doctor himself delighted in surprises of
a terrifying or horrifying nature, it was un-
likely that his inventions in that direction
would be characterized by tameness. He

A Strange Discovery 25

would not, when hard pressed on a dull day,
allow a fastidious care of even his own repu-
tation to impede the development of one of
his surprises. If the town of Bellevue was
to stagnate mentally, it would not be the
fault of George F. Castleton, A.M., M.D.
It was on the eighth day of my stay in
Bellevue, that, on starting forth from the
hotel one morning, I saw Doctor Castleton
standing before the Loomis House, in one
of his favorite attitudes — that is, with his
head and shoulders thrown back and his
hands upon his hips — looking intently at a
young man who stood speaking with an
aged farmer across the way, near the street
curbing — a harmless-looking youth, with
dark blue eyes, and straight, very dark hair
— in fact, the clerical-looking young man
whom I had seen from my windows. Some-
thing in the man's make-up — perhaps some-
thing in his attire — suggested the stranger
in town. Doctor Castleton's large black
eyes flashed irefully, and he was evidently
gratified at my approach. A complete
stranger in my place might have thought his
arrival opportune, and have looked upon
himself as a diverting instrument in higher
hands employed to prevent bloodshed. As I
stopped by the doctor's side, he said, with ill-
suppressed agitation.

26 A Strange Discovery

" That d d villain over there has got

to leave town. He calls himself a doctor,
but I have set in motion the wheels of the
law of this great State of Illinois, and I'll ex-
pose the infernal rascal." Then, with a dark,
knowing look at me, he hissed (though none
of his preceding words had been audible
across the street), " An ' Irregular,' sir —
cursed sugar-and-water quack — a figure 9
with the tail rubbed off. Why, sir " (in a
more conversational but still emphatic tone),
" / have given sixty grains of calomel at a
dose, and I have given a tenth of a grain of
calomel at a dose; I would give a man a
hundred grains of quinine, and I have done
it; I have " (and here he took from his pock-
et a small round lozenge or button of bone)
" — I have bored into the brains of man —
into the Corinthian Capital of Mortality, so
to speak. When that man " (pointing with
his right forefinger to the circle of bone in
his left palm) " was kicked in the head by his
mule, three of my colleagues were on the
scene before me — standing around like old
women, doing nothing. / have elaborate in-
struments, sir — I don't read any more books
— the world's literature is here " (tapping his
forehead). " I've thought too much to care
for other men's ideas. Like old women, I
was saying, sir. ' Give me a poker,' I yelled

A Strange Discovery 27

— ' give me anything.' I sent for my tre-
phine. Great God, how the blood flew, and
the bone creaked! I raised the depressed
bone. The man Hves. I've done everything,
in my Hfe. And now a cursed quack comes
to town — . Where's his wife? I say —
Where's his suffering children? — Don't tell
me, anybody, that the man's not married,
and run away from his suffering wife. Take
his trail; glide like the wily savage back
over his course, and mark me, sir, you'll trace
the pathway of a besom of destruction:
weeping mothers, broken-hearted fathers,
daughters bowed in the dust. What's he
here for? Why didn't he stay where he was?
But I'll drive him out of town — you will see
— bag and baggage : the wires are set — the
avalanche approaches — he is doomed."

Two days later, at the same spot, I came
upon Doctor Castleton in conversation with
the harmless-looking young man, to whom
the doctor formally presented me. The
name of the young man, as stated by Castle-
ton, and as I already knew, was " Doctor
Bainbridge." We exchanged a few words,
he extended to me an invitation to call upon
him, and he accepted an urgent request
from me to visit me at the hotel. As my stay
in America would probably last but a few
days longer, I proposed that the evening of

28 A Strange Discovery

that same day be selected as the time for his
visit, and to this proposal he readily assented.
Then, with a quiet smile, he bowed and left
us. As he walked away Doctor Castleton
remarked,

" That young man is a genius, sir. Be-
longs to the Corinthian Capital of Mortality.
Trust me, sir, he's the coming man in this
town. He will be a power here, in the years
to come. I read a man, sir, as you would
read a book."

I then invited Doctor Castleton to come
to my rooms that evening, even if he could
spare no more than a few moments; and he
promised to come, " Though," he said, " I
may not be able more than to run in, and run
out again." Bainbridge, the new Bellevue
candidate for medical practice, could devote
his hours as he should elect; but Castleton,
" for twenty years the guardian of the lives
of thousands," must abstract, as best he
might, a few minutes from the onerous du-
ties entailed by the exacting wishes of his
many invalid patrons.

Later in the day, I made arrangements
for a little luncheon to be served that even-
ing in my rooms. There was something
about this Bainbridge that impelled me to
know him better. I had already made up
my mind that I should like him : his were

A Strange Discovery 29

those clear blue eyes that calmly seemed to
understand the world around — truth-loving
eyes. He had to my mind the appearance of
a person with large capacity for physical
pleasure, yet that of one who possessed com-
plete control over every like and dislike of
his being. I at first took him to be extreme-
ly reticent; but later I learned, that, when
the proper chord of sympathy was touched,
he responded in perfect torrents of spoken
confidence.

So I that evening sat in the larger of my
rooms — my " sitting-room " — in momen-
tary expectation of the arrival of one or both
of my invited guests.

The Third Chapter

THE hour was about eight. I had
written a letter or two after our
six o'clock supper, and was now
idle. By my side, in the centre of
the room, stood a table on which
lay several periodicals — monthly and week-
ly, English and American — a newspaper or
two, aand a few books. A rap came at my
door, and on opening it I found Doctor
Bainbridge standing in the hallway. He
wore a black " Prince Albert " coat, a high
silk hat, and, the evening having blown-up
chilly, a summer overcoat. I received him
perhaps a little more warmly than was in the
best of taste, considering that we had not
before exchanged more than a dozen words.
But I had, as I have said, frequently seen him
from my window; he was almost as much of
a stranger in the town as was I, and I re-
ceived him cordially because my feelings
were really cordial. I assisted him to re-
30

A Strange Discovery 31

move his coat, and in other ways did all in
my power to make him comfortable. He
was of slightly more than medium height,
of rather delicate build, with a fair, almost
colorless complexion. His movements, his
language, his attire, indicated the gentleman
— this I should have conceded him in my
club at home, or in my own drawing-room,
quite as readily as here, alone, in an obscure
hotel in the State of Illinois. As we sat con-
versing, I was much surprised to find in him
a considerable degree of culture. He seemed
to possess that particular air which we are
accustomed to think, and generally with
reason, is not to be found apart from a famil-
iarity with metropolitan life on its highest
plane. I did not on that evening, nor did I
later, think him thoroughly schooled, ex-
cept in his profession. He was, however,
fairly well educated, and his opinions seemed
to me from my own stand-point to be sound.
I had observed, in a history of the county
just from the press, which lay on a table in
the office of the hotel, that in 1869 he had
been graduated from an educational insti-
tution somewhere in Pennsylvania; and, in
1873, from the Medical Department of Co-
lumbia University. Later, I learned from
himself, that, from the age of seven to the
age of eleven, he had been instructed at

32 A Strange Discovery

home by a sister who was some nine or ten
years his senior.

I seated him with the large centre-table
between us, and immediately opened the
conversation on some topic of local interest.
It is probable that of the many persons
whom I know and continue to like, that I
liked nine out of ten of them from our first
meeting. Doctor Bainbridge had not been
long in my presence before I knew that my
first impressions of him were not deceptive;
and I felt that his impression of myself was
certainly not unfavorable.

It appeared to me as we talked through
the evening, that he had read about all that
I had read, and much besides. He talked of
English and French history with minute
familiarity. Not oiily had he read English,
French, and German literature, with such
Spanish, Russian, and Italian works as had
been translated into English; but he shamed
me with the thoroughness of his knowledge
of Scott, Dickens, Bulwer, Thackeray, and
others of our best writers of fiction. Goethe
he particularly admired. Of Cervantes he
thought with the rest of us: He had read
" Don Quixote," for the first time, when he
was eighteen, and during a severe illness ac-
companied with intense melancholia; and he
had laughed himself out of bed, and out of his

A Strange Discovery 33

melancholy. " Don Quixote " was, he said,
the only book which he had ever read in soli-
tude — that is, read to himself — which had
compelled him to laugh aloud. Works of
science, particularly scientific works in the
domain of physics, he delighted in. His im-
agination was of a most charming character.
It was at that time in my life almost a passion
with me to analyze human nature — to theo-
rize over the motives and the results of hu-
man action; over the probable causes of
known or assumed effects, and the reverse —
in short, I thought myself a philosopher. I
have never met another person whom it so
much interested me to study as it did this
young American. But after ample oppor-
tunity to know him, even now as I sit writ-
ing more than twenty years later, and I think
of the pleasure of that temporary friendship
in far-away Illinois, I am puzzled about
many things concerning Doctor Bainbridge.
He certainly possessed a scientific mind. He
himself said that he had no very great love
for written poetry: had he a poetic mind?
He loved the beautiful in life: he loved sym-
metry in form, he loved harmony in color, he
loved good music. And yet, though he had
read the English-writing poets, he seemed
to care less for their work than for anything
else in literature. The thought of this incon-

34 ^ Strange Discovery

sistency has perplexed me whenever I have
thought of it through all these years. As I
have intimated, he was charmed by the beau-
tiful, and by every known expression of
beauty; but for the strictly metrical in lan-
guage-expression, he evinced almost a dis-
taste. I have often thought that he had,
through some peculiar circumstance in his
earlier life, acquired a suggestive dislike to
the very form of verse. To this peculiarity
there was, however, exception, to which I
am about to allude.

By the time we had smoked out a cigar
apiece, we were exchanging views and com-
ments on such writers, English and Ameri-
can, as came to mind. One of the books
that lay on my table was a copy of Byron;
though most of the others were the works
of American authors — Hawthorne, Irving,
Longfellow, Poe, and one or two others.
He had picked up my Byron, and glancing
at it had remarked that if all the poets were
hke Byron he would devote more time than
he did to the reading of verse. I recall a re-
mark that, with Byron's personality in mind,
he made as he returned the book to the
table. " Poor fellow ! " he said. " But
what are we to expect of a man who had a
volcano for a mother, and an iceberg for a
wife? A woman's character is largely

A Strange Discovery 35

formed by the quality of men that enter into
her life; a man's, even more so by the qual-
ity of women that enter into his. I wonder
if Byron ever intimately knew a true woman?
— a woman at once intellectually and mor-
ally normal, in a good wholesome way — a
woman with a good brain and a warm heart?
No man, in my opinion, is a really good man
save through the influence of good women."

It is impossible for me to recall much of
what he said of the American authors of
whom we talked, with the exception of'Poe;
and there are reasons why I should clearly
remember in substance, and almost in words,
everything that was said of him. Of all
writers, with one exception, Poe interests
me the most; and I judge that in interest,
both as a personality and as a literary artist.
Doctor Bainbridge placed Edgar Allan Poe
first and uppermost among those who have
left to the world a legacy of English verse or
prose. And this feeling was, I truly believe,
in no measure influenced by Poe's national-
ity. If Bainbridge possessed any narrow
national prejudices I never learned of them.

He spoke rapturously of Poe as a poet —
" The Raven," as a matter of course, receiv-
ing high praise : Of that unique and really
grand poem, he said that he thought it the
best in the English language.

36 A Strange Discovery

It was at this point in our conversation
that he told me he rarely read verse; that
he had, with certain exceptions, never done
so with much pleasure, but that in some
way he had managed to read nearly all the
noted poetry published in our language.
Still, he said, there were poems which ab-
sorbed and almost fascinated him. Of the
English poets of the present century, Byron
alone had written enough poetry to prove
himself a poet; and he explained that in his
opinion the writing of an occasional or
chance poem, though the poem were true
poetry, did not make of the author a poet.
Then he mentioned a poem which for more
than a century has been by the critical world
accepted as of the highest order of true po-
etry. Gradually warming to the subject, he
said:

" A poem like this is not to my mind po-
etry. Byron wrote true poetry, and suffi-
cient of it in his short life to prove himself
ten times over a poet. To compare this poem
with Byron's poetry — say with parts of
' Childe Harold,' or ' The Prisoner of Chil-
lon,' or with some of his shorter poems —
would be like comparing the most perfect
mechanical device with a graceful animal —
say the mechanical imitation of a tiger or a
gazelle with the living original; the first a

A Strange Discovery 37

wonderfully moving piece of machinery, il-
lustrating the limit of human constructive
power; perfectly under control, the move-
ments smooth, unvarying, rhythmical,
charming, excelling in agility and power its
living prototype — ^but still, scientific — to the
discerning eye, artful. The other, something
more than rhythmical, more than smooth,
beyond the control of human agency, beyond
the power of man to analyze as to synthetize
— more than science can explain, more than
eyen art dare claim. The one explicable,
the other inexplicable; the one from the
hand of patient skill — of talent ; the other a
result of force mysterious, divine. The
lions of Alexius Comnenus, it is said, could
roar louder than the lions of the desert."

' ' But what of Poe, and ' The Raven ? '" I
asked.

" The surprising thing about ' The
Raven ' is," he said, " and I assert only what
I believe to be from internal evidence
demonstrable — first, that the poem arose
out of a true poetic impulse of the soul; and,
second, that it discloses the very highest art
possible to a writer. Now I truly believe
that the first writing of ' The Raven ' — and,
too, the stanzas were probably not first writ-
ten in their present published order — con-
veyed Poe's poetic sense just as completely

38 A Strange Discovery

as the published poem now does. But this
was not sufficient for Edgar Allan Poe — for
the scientific man, the artful man, the poetic
genius with a genius for concentrated men-
tal toil in the effort to attain literary perfec-
tion. This makes ' The Raven ' a curiosity
in true poetic expression."

" Then you believe," I said, " that both
the state of feeling from which true poetry
arises, and the particular words by which
the feeling is conveyed, are inspired."

" I do. But Poe was able actually to im-
prove the language of inspiration, whilst
transmitting uninjured the poetic concep-
tion. Those stanzas in Grey's 'Elegy' which
convey from him to us the psychic wave
of poetic impulse, may have been hundreds
of times altered in their wording, through
seven years of tentative efTort; and it is
possible that he succeeded in retaining the
original feeling — the poem is certainly ar-
tistic. But the feeling conveyed by Grey
is commonplace enough, anyway; whilst
that transmitted by Poe is wholly unique,
and intensely absorbing — indeed, a startHng
revelation. I have always felt that Byron,
Milton, Shakespeare, found within their
souls their poetry, and that the linguistic ex-
pression of it came to them as naturally as
did the feeling."

A Strange Discovery 39

" Such minds," I said, " will always be a
mystery to common mortals."

" I take it," replied Bainbridge, " that
waves and wavelets of poetic feeling are
common enough among men — quite as
common as mental pictures of beautiful ma-
terial images; but the rarity is in the word-
conception, which I hold must as a rule be
spontaneous if it is to convey unblemished
the original feeling. The musical genius is
able to convey his psychic impression in har-
monious sounds; the true poet, in words.
To the rest of us the process is, as you say, a
mystery — we call it inspiration.

" Take an isolated poem, such as under,
say patriotic feeling, springs from the mind
of one who never again writes poetry; does
this not help to prove my theory that all
true poetry is a result of inspiration — is in
its inception and in its word-expression quite
extraneous to its apparent author?

" To both my intellect and my feeling,
'The Raven' stands a beautiful masterpiece,
which, because it is both the product of a
strange psychic state and the work of in-
tellect will probably be the last poem, of
those now extant, to be admired by the hu-
man race when intellectual development and
growth shall finally have driven from the
lives and the minds of men all romance, all

40 A Strange Discovery

sentiment, all poetry, leaving to the race
only intellect and will."

After some further talk, and in reply to a
statement of my own, Bainbridge said,

" Of course I can speak only for myself;
and for me there is music in the poetry of
Byron and of Poe, and there is the psychic
effect of color. The rhythm in certain of
their poems, with the arrangement of word-
sound, produces the saddest music possible,
I think, to the soul of man — a prevailing
monotone so measured as to result in an ef-
fect decidedly strange and quite indescrib-
able. But the real peculiarity of their poetry
— and in this Poe excels Byron — is a psychic
effect the same as that which remains after
viewing certain pictures in black- and white,
the shade gradations of which are so artistic
as to create an illusion of color — sombre,
highly shaded, yet color. This color effect
of Poe's poetry I have felt very slightly, if at
all, immediately on a first reading, as I feel
the music of his verse^ — a rereading, or the
lapse of time, being required for its full de-
velopment. I have not read a line of Poe
in the last two or three years, and at the
present moment I feel Ulalume as I would
some weird scene or picture viewed long
ago."

I asked him what particular color effects

A Strange Discovery 41

Poe's poetry produced in his mind, and he
replied,

" The impression of red I do not at all re-
tain. That of black, more or less intense, is
predominant; but the color effects of almost
any variegated landscape — red being ex-
cluded, and the scene having been viewed by
moonlight, or in the dusk of evening, or pos-
sibly on a densely clouded day — is at this
moment alive within me. And yet, with a
single exception, I have never received from
musical or other sounds a psychic color ef-
fect — the exception being that certain tones
of a violin leave the same mental impression
as does the sight of purple. As I am not ac-
quainted with the technical language of
either painter or musician, I can attempt to
describe these effects only in common lan-
guage. I speak for myself only, and am any-
thing but dogmatic on the subject of poetry.
The symbolism of Poe's verse we must solve,
each for himself. To me, for myself, the so-
lution seems not difificult — and so no doubt
says another; but on comparison these so-
lutions would no doubt be very different."

But highly as Bainbridge estimated Poe's
verse, he placed Poe even higher among
writers of prose fiction than among poets.
As I have said, I am myself an admirer of
Poe. His prose I have always thought the

42 A Strange Discovery

work of a true genius — something, as Doc-
tor Bainbridge said, " more than art, aided
by the most perfect art." But when we
came to speak of his prose writings, Bain-
bridge was able to express in language all
that I had felt of Poe, and to disclose and
explain components of his genius that I had
never before fully recognized.

I then asked Bainbridge what it was in
Poe's prose that he so much admired.

" Poe's strong element of power as a writer
of short stories," said Bainbridge, " is, I
think, his scientific imagination — the same
capacity, strange as the statement may ap-
pear, that, when directed into another chan-
nel, makes a great physicist. It strikes me
as inaccurate to say that Newton discovered
the law of gravitation. Newton imagined
the fact of a law of physical gravitation; and
then he proceeded to prove the law of gravi-
tation, accomplishing the discovery by
means of a second attribute of genius — viz.,
tireless mental energy — the possession of a
talent for rigorous mental application and
severe nervous strain. In the sense that Co-
lumbus discovered America — in that sense,
Newton discovered the law of gravitation:
Columbus imagined an America, and then
proceeded to make a physical demonstration
of his belief by discovering the Bahamas.

A Strange Discovery 43

The same faculty — scientific imagination —
in Poe gave us ' A Descent into the Mael-
strom, The Murders in the Rue Morgue,'
and other of his tales. And not alone in
physics, but in metaphysics, did his imagina-
tion open up to him just conceptions; so
that in the field of both healthy and morbid
mental action his ' intuitive ' knowledge was
unerring. 'The Fall of the House of Usher'
is so true to the real in conception, and so
consummate in portrayal, that the more one
knows about the mind, the more he inclines
to wonder whether these compositions
might not have been aided by actual per-
sonal experience. Yet these delineations are
purely imaginative. Take ' The Imp of the
Perverse, The Tell-Tale Heart,' and simi-
lar of his stories, not all of which could in
reason have come within the experience
of one man, and which are undoubtedly
grounded upon intuitive suggestion."

I asked him which of Poe's tales he
thought the best.

" That would indeed be difficult to de-
termine," he replied. " If the criterion is to
be my own intellectual enjoyment, I should
mention one; if my feelings, then another.
It is possible that I might select one in which
my intellectual enjoyment, and my feelings
pure and simple, were about equally en-

44 -^ Strange Discovery

gaged. We shall probably agree that the
most important object of fiction is to pro-
duce in the reader a state of feeling, just as
musical composition is intended to produce
a state of feeling — the short story being
comparable with a brief musical production
intended to produce a single variety of emo-
tion; the novel, to the music of an opera
with its many parts, intended each to excite
a particular state of feeling. Naturally prose
fiction may, and almost necessarily does,
have other objects. Now the reading of 'The
Fall of the House of Usher ' produces a cer-
tain state of emotion, and that wholly apart
from any appeal to intellect; no endeavor to
do more than produce that state of feeling is
made, nothing more than that is efifected,
and that much is attained in a manner which
no pen that has traced short-story fiction,
save that of Poe, has ever accomplished.
Hence, if the production of feeling — an ap-
peal to the purely moral side of the triangle
of mind — be the paramount essential in fic-
tion, ' The Fall of the House of Usher' is the
best short story in the English language."

Here Doctor Bainbridge rose from his
chair, and taking a turn or two across the
floor, continued, in tones indicating vexa-
tion,

" Why has not somebody with a ray of

A Strange Discovery 45

the imagination necessary to a comprehen-
sion of Poe's genius given us at least a de-
cent sketch of his brief Hfe ! Was Poe in a
state of mental aberration when he made
Griswold his Uterary executor? Is the
world forever to hear of him only from those
who see the dark side of his life and know
nothing of his life's work? — from those who
look at his life and his life's work through
the smoked glass of their dull provincial
minds? Let us hope for an assay of what is
left to us of Poe — an assay which, not wholly
ignoring the little dross, will still lose no
grain of the pure, virgin gold, and give to
the world something approaching what is
due to the genius himself, and what, with
such a subject, is due to the world."

" Let me alter my question — or, I should
say, ask a different one," I said, when he had
again seated himself : " Which of Poe's
stories most interested you? From which
did you receive the most satisfaction? "

" I have been more occupied and inter-
ested by ' The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym'
than by any two or three of his other stories."

I expressed surprise at this avowal; and
my comments on what appeared to me to
show a peculiar taste implied a desire for
explanation. He continued :

" Although ' The Narrative of A. Gordon

46 A Strange Discovery

Pym ' has served as a suggestion, or even a
pattern, for some of our best recent stories
of adventure, and although it has many
points of excellence in itself, it is not the
story alone, but the opportunity which the
story affords of an analysis of Poe's mind,
that creates the greater interest for me. I
have always been puzzled to find a reason-
ably adequate cause for the incomplete state
of that narrative. The supposition that Poe
had not at his disposal, at the moment he re-
quired it, the necessary time for its comple-
tion is an hypothesis which I only mention
to dispose of. At its close he wrote and
added to the narrative a ' Note ' of nearly a
thousand words; and in the time required
for the penning of that addition, he could
have brought the story to — ^perhaps an
abrupt, but still, an artistic close. No. Then
did Poe not complete ' The Narrative of A.
Gordon Pym' because his imagination failed
him — failed to supply material of such a
quality as his refined and faultless taste de-
manded? If so, then why did he begin it?
Why write more than sixty thousand words
in his usual careful and precise style, on a
subject to him little known, in to him a new
field of literary efifort? He could in the time
required to write ' The Narrative of A. Gor-
don Pym ' have written from five to ten

A Strange Discovery 47

short stories along familiar lines. No : none
of these hypotheses explains the unfinished
state of that narrative. My explanation is
that the story has a foundation in fact, and
that Poe himself never learned more than a
foundation for the portion which he wrote.
Its leading character next to Pym is one
Dirk Peters, a sailor, mutineer, etc. It
is my theory that Pym and Peters ex-
isted in fact, but that Poe never met
either of them, though he did meet sail-
ors who had known Dirk Peters, and that
he heard from them the first part of the story,
in the form in which it grew to be repeated
by seafaring men along the New England
coast in the '30s and '40s. Having heard
what he supposed to be sufficient, with the
aid of his own imagination, to make an in-
teresting story for publication, Poe began
and continued to write. Then, as he pro-
gressed, he found that his imagination was
embarrassed — frustrated by the known facts
already employed — ^whilst it was not assisted
by new facts which he was positive existed,
but which he could not procure. As he at-
tempted to close the narrative, the cold,
written page was a very different thing from
what he had conceived it would be as he sat
in the tap-room of some New England old
' Sailor's Home,' with a couple of glasses of

48 A Strange Discovery

Burton ale on the table, listening through
the drowsy afternoon to the fact and fiction
of some old ' tar,' as the two looked across
the white-sanded floor at the old moss-
grown dock without, and listened to the salt
wavelets splashing against its rotting tim-
bers, and watched the far-distant sails on the
outer sea. It is not very difficult to picture
to one's self Poe searching among these
sailors' lodging-houses for Dirk Peters; nor
is it unreasonable to assume that he did so
search for him. If Dirk Peters was twenty-
seven years old in 1827, when the mutiny
occurred, he was only forty-nine at the time
of Poe's death — in fact, would be only
seventy-seven if now alive. Poe says in his
' Note,' that ' Peters, from whom some in-
formation might be expected, is still alive,
and a resident of Illinois, but cannot be met
with at present. He may hereafter be found,
and will, no doubt, afford material for a
conclusion of Mr. Pym's account.' I have
no doubt that Poe eventually learned ex-
actly where Peters resided; but no matter
how much Poe may have desired to meet
with Peters, he could not have done so. In
the '40S it was a long, tedious, expensive
journey from New York to Illinois. Still,
Poe hoped some day to meet Peters, and did
not care to say to the public exactly where

A Strange Discovery 49

he could be met with. Then came Poe's un-
utterably sad death, leaving the narrative in-
complete."

As Bainbridge neared the close of his re-
marks, we heard a heavy and rapid step ap-
proach along the hall. It stopped before my
door; and just as Bainbridge ceased to
speak, a loud rap, evidently made with the
head of a heavy cane, sounded on the panel.
The door flew open, and Doctor Castleton
rushed into the middle of the room — or,
rather, bounded across the room. Bain-
bridge and I instantly arose, and I stepped
forward to take Doctor Castleton's hand in
mine, and to care for his hat and cane; but
he waved me off. " No, no: no time —
not a minute to spare — ^three patients wait-
ing " — here he glanced at Bainbridge, as
if to observe the effect of his speech on a
beginner, who was fortunate if he yet pos-
sessed a single patient — " like to keep my
word — fine evening." He seated himself on
the edge of a chair, and projected his glance
around the room. No better subject imme-
diately presenting itself to mind, I remarked
that we had just been talking of Edgar Allan
Poe, and his unfinished story, " The Nar-
rative of A. Gordon Pym " ; and I spoke of
Dirk Peters.

" I know old man Peters — know him well,

50 A Strange Discovery

sir," said Doctor Castleton, without a mo-
ment's hesitation; " short old fellow — sea-
faring man — about four feet six, or seven —
must have been a devil in his day — old man,
now — seventy or eighty; no hair, no beard;
farms a few acres on the Bluff; very sick
man, right now."

Bainbridge and I had cast at each other a
glance, which plainly said, " Isn't that Cas-
tleton for you? " But as he continued, and
we had time to consider, the probability that
Dirk Peters was alive, and the bare possi-
bility that he was in the neighborhood, and
that, if he did reside near Bellevue, Doctor
Castleton would be very likely to have met
him, gradually dawned on our minds.
Quick as was the glance we exchanged,
Castleton saw it — yes, and understood it.

" Gentlemen," he continued, " I know
whereof I speak. It is true, I never before
thought of Peters in this connection. In the
cases of my library, the books stand two
rows deep. Thousands of books have been
carried into my attic, to make room for
newer books — I never need to glance twice
at a book. Of course I have Poe's works,
and bound in morocco, too — the grandest
genius ever bestowed upon humanity by the
prolific and liberal hand of our Creator.
Still, I never happened to read the grand and

A Strange Discovery 51

mighty effort of that colossal intellect to
which you refer — ' The Narrative of a Snort-
ing Thing,' though I recall ' The Literary
Life of Thingum Bob.' But I am certain —
certain as the unerring fiat of Omnipotent
Power — that this man Peters is within ten
miles of us, and is at this moment a mighty
ill man — almost ready, in fact, to visit a land
from which he will be little likely to return.
I refer to ' The undiscovered country from
whose bourne no traveller returns.' By
superhuman efforts I have kept this man
Peters alive now long past the time-limit
set by his Creator for him to go — I mean,
three score and ten years; but even I and
science have our limitations, and the be-
ginning of the end is at hand."

By this time Doctor Castleton was pacing
up and down the room, stopping now and
then to look at an engraving on the wall,
taking up and replacing books, seeing every-
thing. I could not but feel that already the
curiosity which had impelled him to " run
in " was satisfied, and that he would soon be
going. A minute after his last recorded
words, Dirk Peters seemed to have dropped
completely from his mind. I was wholly ab-
sorbed with the thought that Dirk Peters
might be within our reach; and that if he
really was, it was possible that we might

52 A strange Discovery

learn whether Pym and he had reached the
South Pole, and if so, what they had there
discovered. It was plainly evident that the
mind of Doctor Bainbridge was deeply en-
gaged with the same subject. I was anxious
to know what he thought of Castleton's
statement; for the more I discussed the
matter within myself, the more I felt in-
clined to believe that Castleton was not
making a mistake. But Castleton was cer-
tainly now not thinking of Peters. I could,
amid my thoughts, hear him declaiming,

" Yes, sir; England is a mighty power.
Her navy, sir, can — and mark me, it will —
sweep France and Russia and Prussia and
Austria and Italy from the ocean as — as a
shar — a wha — a huge and voracious sword-
fish sweeps before its imperious onslaught,
with unerring certainty and cyclonic power,
a whole school of sneaking mackerel or cod-
fish from the pathway fixed for it by Eternal
Destiny."

His prognostication was intended to be
a graceful compliment paid to the country
of a visiting stranger, and, in the absence
of other foreigners, not discourteous to any-
body. I never before or since knew his nat-
ural flow of eloquence to waver as in this
instance — a rarity that of itself makes the
remark worthy of record.

A Strange Discovery 53

Doctor Castleton soon, against all pro-
tests, bounded out of the door, as he had
bounded in; and then Bainbridge and I dis-
cussed the astonishing possibilities should it
prove true that Dirk Peters was within our
reach. We concluded that Castleton's state-
ment was one of great importance, and we
agreed upon a course of procedure. We
spent the remainder of the evening in a man-
ner very enjoyable to myself, and evidently
gratifying to Doctor Bainbridge ; and it was
past midnight when we separated.

The following morning I looked up Doc-
tor Castleton; and he, ever courteous and
obliging, did more than consent to permit
me to drive out to the home of his patient,
Peters. He proposed that I wait a day, as
he knew that Peters would within that time,
and might any hour, send for him; and as
soon as he was summoned he would notify
me, and together we would drive out to the
old sailor's residence — ^which, the doctor
said, was a small, two-roomed log structure,
where the old man dwelt entirely alone.

The Fourth Chapter

THE summons from Doctor Castle-
ton to accompany him came sooner
than he had led me to expect; and
at a little past noon of the same
day on which he had made his
promise to take me with him to see Dirk
Peters, I received a message, saying that if
agreeable to me he would at two o'clock be
in front of my hotel, prepared to start for the
home of the old sailor.

At a minute or two before the time fixed,
I was standing at the main entrance to the
Loomis House, and at precisely two o'clock
Doctor Castleton drove up in a two-horse,
four-wheeled, top-buggy. He made room
for me on his left, and off we started.

We drove in a westerly direction for a full
mile along the main street before leaving the
town behind us. Then we struck a level turf
road; and away trotted the superb team of
rather small, wiry, black horses. Doctor

54

A Strange Discovery ^^

Castleton said that we should reach our des-
tination — ^which was rather more than ten
miles from the city limits — within forty min-
utes; and we did. Over a part of the level
turf road I should estimate that we drove
at about a three-minute gait; but after
traversing some four or five miles, we turned
south into a narrow road, which soon be-
came hilly and tortuous; yet even here it
was only on particularly rough or uneven
portions of the way that the doctor moder-
ated our speed to less than a four-minute
gait.

As we rode along at this exhilarating
pace, the buggy whirling around acute
curves among the mighty oaks and maples,
now and then dashing down a forty-five-de-
gree descent of fifty or sixty feet, again
thundering over a dilapidated bridge of re-
sonant planks, the doctor remarked to me
that Peters was certain to die, it being only
a question of days, or perhaps of hours.
" Old Peters," he said, " has been without
visible means of support for the past two or
three years. The Lord only .knows how he
has lived since the period when he became
unable to work. Even his small farm is
mortgaged for all it is worth." I expressed
to the doctor some surprise that he should
be making twenty-mile drives to see a lonely

56 A Strange Discovery

old man whose illness he was unable to re-
lieve, and from whom he could expect no
fee. I had grown to take an interest in hear-
ing Castleton express his opinions. Many
of his conceptions of life were so unique; his
mental vision, always intensely acute, was
often so oblique; his station of mental ob-
servation so alterable, and so quickly al-
tered; his sentiments often so earthy, again
so exalted — that I believe the man would
have interested me even under circum-
stances less quiet and monotonous than
were those of my stay, up to this time, in
Bellevue. To my expression of mild won-
derment that he should tax his time and en-
ergies to such an extent without pecuniary
gain, he replied :

" My dear sir, you are a traveller. You
have sailed the seas and crossed the mighty
main; you have dashed over mountains,
and sweltered 'mid tropical suns on sandy
desert-wastes. To you our Rockies are
mole-hills — our great lakes mere ponds.
You are not a child to cry out in the dark-
ness. Granted. Yet, sir, let us by a stretch
of fancy imagine ourselves in the place of
Columbus, on the third day of August, 1492.
We are about to leave the Known, in search
of the Unknown — about to penetrate for the
first time that vast expanse of water which

A Strange Discovery 57

for uncounted ages has stretched away be-
fore the wondering vision and baffled re-
search of Europe. We are not leaving the
world — we are not alone. Yet is it not a
solace that a few friends gather on the shore
to say good-by? The sympathy of the kind,
the well-wishes of the brave — are they not
always a comfort? This poor fellow Peters,
whose lowly home we are now approaching,
is alone — he is about to start on his last jour-
ney, alone. The land to which he perhaps
this day begins that journey is not only un-
known, but unknowable to us in our present
state. And therefore is it, sir, that the
learned professions live. Even the worldly
man, when he comes to start upon this last
journey, does not disdain the sympathy and
kindness of the loving, and the expressions
of hopefulness that come from the good and
pure. True, you may say that the learned
professions are for the man who is about to
die but frail supports on which to lean. The
wise man as well as the ignorant man, when
he fears that death is near, reaches out for
help or at least some knowledge of his future.
He sends for his physician, who cannot
promise him anything — cannot number the
days or hours of his remaining life; for his
lawyer, who cannot assure him beyond all
doubt that his will can be made to endure

58 A Strange Discovery

for a single day beyond his death. At last,
he sends for a minister of God — and what
says the spiritual expert? Perhaps he rep-
resents that old, old organization, whose
history stretches back for centuries through
the dark ages to the borders of the brilliancy
beyond; that old hierarchy that claims to
hold all spiritual power to which man may
appeal with reasonable hope. What says to
the dying man this representative and heir
of the accumulated spiritual research and
culture of the past? He may with honesty
say, ' Hope; ' but if he says more than
Hope, he does it as the blind might sit and
guide by signs through unknown labyrinths
the blind. All this is true; but the fact that
the learned professions have come into ex-
istence, and continue to live and draw from
the masses their material support — a tax
greater in amount than the income of the
nations — shows that they meet, and genu-
inely meet, a demand. I say genuinely, for
' You cannot fool all the people all the
time.' And so, my young friend, this poor
man Peters wants me. Later, if there is
time, he will want the representative of the
religion which he professes, or which he re-
members that his mother or his father pro-
fessed. I shall stand by his side and place
my hand upon his throbbing brow — and he

A Strange Discovery 59

will hope, and not despair. Who knows
whether or not our hope and our faith have
power in some strange way to link the pres-
ent to the future, carrying forward the spirit-
seed to soil in which it blooms in splendor
through eternity? As Byron says,

' How little do we know that which we are,
How less what we may be.'

But here we are; and I know by the face of
that old neighbor-woman looking from the
doorway there that our man still lives."

We drew up in front of a small building
some sixteen feet square, the walls of which
consisted of huge logs piled one upon an-
other and mortised at the corners. The doc-
tor entered, leaving me seated in the buggy.
But soon he came to the door, and signalled
for me. As I entered the house I heard a
voice say, " Yes, doctor, the old hulk's still
afloat — water-logged, but still afloat."
Looking in the direction of the voice, I saw
on a bed in one corner of the room an old
beardless man. I had not a second's doubt
that Dirk Peters of the ' Grampus,' sailor,
mutineer, explorer of the Antarctic Sea, pa-
tron and friend of A. Gordon Pym, was be-
fore me. His body up to the waist was cov-
ered with an old blanket; but I felt certain

6o A Strange Discovery

that he was less than five feet in height, and
felt quite positive that he would not then
measure more than four and a half feet. His
height in 1827 was, Poe states, four feet and
eight inches. One of the old man's arms
lay exposed by his side, and the finger-ends
reached below the knee; while his hand,
spread out on the blanket, would have cov-
ered the area of a small ham. His shoulders
and neck, and the one bare arm visible, were
indicative of vast muscular strength. There
was the enormous head mentioned by Poe;
and there was the completely bald scalp, ex-
posed, as by a semi-automatic movement of
respect he raised his hand to his head and re-
moved a section of woolly sheepskin; and
there, too, was the indenture in the crown;
there the enormous mouth, spreading from
ear to ear, with the lips which, as he gave a
chuckle, and the wrinkles about his eyes
evinced a passing facial contortion, I saw to
be wholly wanting in pliancy. There was
the expression, fixed at least as far as the
mouth and lower face was concerned, the
protruding teeth, and the grotesque appear-
ance of a smile such as a demon might have
smiled over ruined innocence. Oh, there
was no possibility of a mistake. Doctor Cas-
tleton glanced at me questioningly, but
confidently; and I lowered my head in as-

A Strange Discovery 6i

sent. But if I expected to have an opportu-
nity of learning much of anything from
Peters, I was mistaken. Doctor Castleton
was almost ready to depart before I had fin-
ished my visual examination of the old man.
I heard the aged neighbor-woman, a coal
miner's wife, who had as an act of kindness
come in to assist the invalid, say, looking at
the poor old fellow :

" My mon stayed wi' he" the night, doch-
ter. The poor mon, he had delerion bad.
He thot hesel' on a mountain o' ice, wi' tha
mountain o' ice on other like mountain o'
salt, a lookin' at devils i' hell. But sin' tha
light o' day, tha good mon's hesel' agin."

Doctor Castleton had produced from the
recesses of a large medicine-case certain
pills and powders, had given his directions,
and was actually about to leave without giv-
ing me an opportunity, or seeming to think
that I desired an opportunity, of speaking
with Peters. I then appealed for a moment
more of time, and for consent to ask the pa-
tient a question or two ; and my appeal was
granted. I stepped close to the bedside,
and looking down into the eyes that looked
up into mine, asked the old man if his name
was Dirk Peters; to which he answered af-
firmatively. I then asked him if he had in
the year 1827 sailed from the port of Nan-

62 A Strange Discovery

tucket, on the brig ' Grampus,' under Cap-
tain Bernard, in company, among others,
with a youth named A. Gordon Pym? And
a moment later I wished that I had been less
abrupt in my questioning. Peters did man-
age quite coolly and rationally to answer
" Yes " to all my questions. But at the
words " Pym," " Bernard," " Grampus," his
eyes began, in appearance, to start from
their sockets; those awful teeth gleamed
from that cavernous mouth, as he uttered
demoniac yell on yell, and raised himself to
a sitting posture in the bed. I thought his
eyeballs must certainly burst, as he looked
off into nothingness wildly, as if a troop of
fiends were rushing upon him.

" Great God ! " he screamed, " there,
there — she's gone. Ah," quieting a little;
" ah ; the old man with the eyes of a god,
and the cubes of crystal with the limpid
liquid of heaven. Oh," his voice again raised
to piercing screams, " Oh, she's gone, and
he loves her — and I love him. Now man,
they called you the human baboon — be
more than man! — I loved the boy — I tell
you, I loved him from the first. , I saved him
once — aye, a dozen times — but not like this
— not from hell. Scale the chasms of salt,
and climb the lava cliffs, and — but the lake
of fire at the bottom — the old man — and the

A Strange Discovery 63

abyss, my God, the abyss ! The snow-drift
beard — the godlike eyes " — his voice then
quieting for a few words. " Ah, mother,
mother, mother." Then in a deep, earnest
tone, " I'll be a human baboon, and I'll do
what man never yet did, nor beast — yes,
and what never in time will man do again."
Then he completely lost control of him-
self. He jumped from the bed. Doctor
Castleton stood near the doorway, and I
quickly moved to his side. The old woman
had vanished. Peters poured forth yell on
yell, such as I had never conceived it possi-
ble for a human throat to utter. He grasped
a strong oak-pole, and broke it as I might
have broken a dry twig. I afterward placed
the longer fragment of this pole with each
of its extremities on a large stone, the two
about four feet apart; and lifting into the
air a rock weighing a hundred or more
pounds, dropped it on the middle of the
fragment; and it did not even bend what
this man of awful strength had severed with
his two hands as one would break a wooden
toothpick between the fingers. Then Peters
picked up a stove which stood, fireless, in the
room; and he cast it through an open win-
dow, seven or eight feet away, into the yard
beyond, where it fell, breaking into a hun-
dred pieces. I need scarcely say that Doc-

64 A Stmnge Discovery

tor Castleton and myself had left the room
with decided alacrity. Well, to terminate
a description none too agreeable, Peters'
wild delirium continued until, out in the
door-yard, forty or fifty feet from the house,
he fell, exhausted. Then we carried him
back to his bed. Doctor Castleton gave
some directions to the old woman, and soon
we left for town, Peters being asleep.

" Strange," said Doctor Castleton, after
we had driven for perhaps a mile, " strange
that a thought can do such things ! A word
is said, the thread of memory is touched by
suggestion, and it vibrates back through
half a century to some scene of terror
stamped ineradicably upon the brain — or if
not upon the brain, then where? — and, lo!
the reflexes spring into action, and a maniac
with Samson's strength takes the place of
a docile invalid. Ah, who can answer the
mystery of mysteries, and tell us what this
consciousness is! Behind that gift of God
rests the secret of life, and of death, and
probably of Eternity itself."

We rode along, returning a little more
leisurely than we had come. I sat wonder-
ing how we were to learn from such a man
as Peters his secrets — if secrets he possessed.
Even if his past held only important facts
not of secret import, I had received striking

A Strange Discovery 65

evidence that the subject of that wonderful
sea-voyage was not to be carelessly broached
to Dirk Peters. I concluded to say nothing
more of the matter until I should meet Bain-
bridge, whom I knew would be anxiously
awaiting my return, hardly daring to hope
that Poe's Dirk Peters was really in exist-
ence and discovered.

As we neared town, my mind turned to
the strange being at my side. Here was a
man who could think, and think both
learnedly and poetically of the wonders of
heaven and earth ; and yet who could talk of
driving from town a business competitor!
Surely that part of his talk which seemed so
laughable was in spirit wholly dramatic —
intended rather to fill the assumed expecta-
tions of his hearers, than truly representing
the speaker's feeling. Then my thoughts
reverted to the talk I had ovei'heard, when
"Pickles" was made to see veritable showers
of " greenbacks " raining into his vacuous
pocket. I smiled to myself; and then a
spirit of audacity coming over me, I de-
termined to ascertain what Castleton would
say to me on the currency question. I con-
cluded to admit that I had overheard
through my open window the conversation
on monetary matters alluded to. There
would then be no opportunity for him to

66 A Strange Discovery

evade the responsibility of assuming as his
own the pecuHar opinions expressed by him
on that occasion. Now, when he could not
consistently deny the advocacy of views to
me so apparently untenable, and could not
seriously adopt them without lowering him-
self intellectually in the estimation of a
stranger — and I did not for an instant think
that he believed the nonsense which he had
so glowingly represented and demonstrated
to poor old " Pickles " — then by what pos-
sible means would he extricate himself from
the dilemma?

When I broached the money question, he
seemed to warm to the subject at once; but
as I led around to the fact of my overhearing
the " Pickles " incident, he seemed slightly
disconcerted — but only momentarily. He
was himself again so quickly that I should
not have noticed his embarrassment had I
not been closely observing him for that very
purpose.

" Well, now," he said, blithely, " as you
are a stranger, a man of high and irreproach-
able honor, sans peur et sans reproche —
and one, I know, who will not place me in
an equivocal position here in my home by
divulging my true position — I don't mind
telling you, in all confidence, the truth. I
am not, my dear sir, an ass. (What I say,

A Strange Discovery 67

remember, goes no farther.) I am, sir, a
theoretical and practical politician of great
— I only repeat what many of my friends
(men of supreme mental attainments, and
the best of judges) herald forth as undeni-
able truth — a politician, sir, of great depth
and exceeding cunning — a rare combina-
tion, philosophers tell us. What a humbug
this whole greenback question is ! Why, sir,
it is to that very element of scarcity over
which they howl, that money, or anything
else, owes its commercial value. Diminish
the general scarcity of anything on earth to
the point of a full supply for everybody and
the commercial value at once becomes nil.
There is nothing of more real value than at-
mospheric air; yet the supply is so great
that all demands are filled, leaving an enor-
mous surplus; and hence atmospheric air
has no commercial value. There is nothing
on earth of much less service to humanity
than are diamonds; yet the possession of a
pound of fair-sized diamonds would make
a Croesus of a beggar. The dreams of the
Greenbacker are but new phases of our
childhood fancies of finding a mountain of
pure gold, with which we are to make the
whole world happy; it is conceivable to find
the mountain of gold — but, alas ! what will
be its value when v>re have found it? Take

68 A Strange Discovery

actual money, for instance. Any metal
might be used as money which the world
should agree to call money, provided only
that the metal is not so plentiful as to make
it impossible to handle because of bulk, or so
scarce as to make the unit of value impalpa-
ble. The standard may even from time to
time be changed, if we do not object to
the enormous trouble of making the
change "

" And," I remarked, as he paused for a
moment, " if we do not object to the robbery
of either the debtor or the creditor, one or
the other."

" Not at all," he replied. " I assume that
the change shall be fairly made. I have said
that it would be a very great inconvenience
to the world, and without any benefit; it
would in fact be so great a task to make the
change in our money standard that it would
be practically impossible to make it. But
we are of? the track — we were not to talk of
primary money; it was of currency, or
greenbacks, that you spoke. Now it puzzles
you as a man of sense to conceive by what
process of thought another man of sense can
bring himself to advocate unlimited inflation
of our currency; and yet there is a very good
reason why the most sensible man may do
that very thing. Of course, my dear sir, I

A Strange Discovery 69

am aware that the only honest way for a
government to issue unlimited currency is
to give the stuff away, and later to repudiate
it. Now, sir, I need not tell one like your-
self, who has studied the lives of such Eng-
lish statesmen as the puissant Burke, the
sagacious Pitt, the astute Palmerston, that
ninety per cent, of the people — and it is so
even in this glorious land of free schools and
liberty — are relatively to the remaining ten
per cent, either poor and dishonest, or poor
and ignorant; and that none of the hundred
per cent, goes into sackcloth and ashes
when he gets something for nothing. I, sir,
am — or I was until recently — a Jeffersonian
Democrat. But our party made a great mis-
take a few years ago by sticking to the slave
interest too long. I finally became hope-
less of success at the polls. Now, when I
whisper in your all-comprehending ear that
the leaders of this Greenback Party are
anything but Republicans, you will grasp
the point. I repeat, sir, I am not an ass —
if I do bray sometimes. All's fair in love and
politics. But let me say to you, that the
printing presses of the United States will
never be leased by the United States Treas-
ury, whatever party wins at the polls."

As he closed, we entered the town. It
may not be wholly lacking in interest to the

yo A Strange Discovery

reader when I say that, some years later, as
I one morning sat in my library looking
through the window at the far-distant smoke
of Newcastle, I had just laid aside a copy
of the Times, in which paper I had read
of the results of a political contest in the
State of Illinois. The Republicans had
won. The Greenbackers and the Dem-
ocrats had lost. Then my eye caught the
name of Castleton! The doctor had made
the race for Governor — not on the Green-
back ticket, however; not on the Dem-
ocratic .ticket; but — of all things! — on the
anti-liquor or Prohibition ticket I

As we drew up in front of the Loomis
House, Doctor Bainbridge stood on the
sidewalk as if awaiting our return. I smiled,
then nodded an afifirmative to the question
in his eyes; and stepping out of the buggy,
1 linked his arm within my own, and, thank-
ing Doctor Castleton for his kindness, pilot-
ed the way to my room.

The Fifth Chapter

ON opening the door of my sitting-
room, I found Arthur, the facto-
tum, sitting in my large easy-chair,
with one of my volumes of Poe in
his hand. He had overheard part
of the conversation of the preceding even-
ing, and was evidently interested in " The
Narrative of A. Gordon Pym." I observed
also that a bottle of cognac which sat
upon my table, and which I could have
sworn was not more than one-fourth emp-
tied when I left the hotel directly after din-
ner, was now quite empty. The atmos-
phere of the room was pervaded with the
odor of " dead " brandy; and Arthur's eyes
were unusually glassy and staring — for so
early an hour as 5 p.m. Then he settled the
matter, beyond the shadow of a doubt, with
a hiccough.

" Well, Arthur," I said, pleasantly, as he
clumsily rose in part from his seat — ^into
71

72 A Strange Discovery

which he dropped back, however, as he
heard my kindly tone of address, and knew
there was to be no severity of reckoning —
" well, my boy; been enjoying yourself? "

" Yes, sir," he replied, in a fairly steady
voice — the words that followed, however,
being rhythmically interrupted by an alder-
manic and most vociferous hiccough, which
shall be omitted from this record — " been
reading about Pym and Barnard. Wasn't
that awful when they saw the shipful of dead
corpses ? Just think of that ship, full of dead
men — not one of them alive, and all dead —
and the sails set, and the old ship wabbling
around the ocean just as things might please
to happen ! When the ship got close up to
their brig, and that scream came from
among the corpses, I just jumped, myself!
But wasn't it terrible when that gull pulled
its bloody old beak out of the dead man's
back, and then flew over the brig and
dropped the piece of human flesh at poor
hungry Parker's feet? Gee-whillikens,
now 1 Why, it just made my blood sink in
my heart and lungs."

" Yes," I thought, " and it just made my
brandy sink pretty fast in my bottle and
down your throat." I was amused at his
comments, and at another time might have
listened longer to his talk; but now I must

A Strange Discovery 73

be making some arrangement with Doctor
Bainbridge regarding a possible interview
with Peters; so I said to Arthur that he
might take the vohtme of Poe and keep it
for two or three days, which offer he gladly
accepted; and with an involuntary wander-
ing of the eye toward the brandy bottle, he
left the room.

Then Bainbridge and I seated ourselves,
and I described the late scene in Dirk
Peters' room, repeating almost word for
word all that had been said. He pondered
for a few minutes, during which I could see
that his versatile imagination was in active
play. Then he said,

" Well, we have him ! My, my, what a
discovery ! This will be like reaching across
the decrees of death and taking by the hand
dear Poe himself! But you were hasty — as I
myself might have been. Well, we must see
Castleton — that is, you must — and get his
consent for us to go right out and stay with
Peters, if necessary for a night and a day, or
even longer. We can take care of the poor
old fellow, and watch our opportunity to
glean from him the facts of that strange voy-
age, onward from the moment when, borne
on that swift ocean current, he and Pym
were rushed into the mystery that opened to
receive them, as the white-shrouded figure

74 ^ Strange Discovery

arose in their pathway. ' Fire ' — ' salt ' —
' ice,' said he? I begin almost — almost to
understand! Did you ever, in England,
hear of the Peruvian tradition of an antarctic
country, warm and delightful, peopled by a
civilized — or rather by a highly enlightened
and very mysterious race of whites? Such a
tradition exists. Now, one day in New
York, about three years ago, I allowed my-
self a holiday, as was my custom from time
to time after a period of severe study. On
the day I speak of I entered the Astor
Library, and was permitted to wander at my
pleasure among the books. I carried in my
hand one of the small camp-stools which
stood around the room, and whenever I
found a book that particularly interested me,
I would sit down and look it over. You
understand, I was dissipating in this great
treasure-house of books. About the middle
of the afternoon I found myself in one of the
most unfrequented of the library alcoves.
There, on a shelf so high that I could just see
over its edge as I stood on one of the library
step-ladders, I found a strange little book,
purporting to have been written in 1594. It
had fallen down behind the other books. It
had a leather back, well-worn; I saw that it
was a 1728 Leipsic publication; and possibly
came to the Astor Library by presentation

A Strange Discovery 75

from its wise and liberal founder's private
library — though this is pure surmise. The
book read much like other tales of the time,
so far as its form went. I sat down to look at
it — and I did not arise until I had read it to
its end, some three hours later. I had not read
two pages' before I became satisfied that the
book had more truth than fiction in it. To
have assumed it wholly the work of imagi-
nation, I should have had to admit that the
author was an artist of artists, exceeding,
through his artfulness, in naturalness, all
other fiction-writers. No; there was truth
behind the statements in the little book —
truth at second or third hand, but truth.
Now this little book pretended to tell, and
I believe did tell, the story of a sailor under
Sir Francis Drake, who accompanied this
English navigator on his 1577-1580 voyage.
You will recall, as a matter of history, that,
in the voyage mentioned, Sir Francis crossed
the Atlantic, passed the Strait of Magellan,
crossed the Pacific, and returned to Eng-
land by way of the Cape of Good Hope.
Now during this three-year voyage, the
story is that he once lost his ' bearings ' for
a month; in fact, it is intimated that a hiatus
of two months in his ' log ' really did exist.
This hiatus, however, could easily have been
covered in the ship's log-book. We may

76 A Strange Discovery

conceive of reasons for which he might have
preferred to keep a temporary silence con-
cerning the discovery of a strange people, in
those early, savage times. The little book
said, that, when in the Pacific, after passing
the strait, Sir Francis was for two weeks
driven in a southerly course — a severe, and
in every way most unusual storm prevailing.
When the winds and the waves subsided, he
was surprised to find himself looking into
the mouth of a harbor, on the shores of
which stood a city, by no means so large as
London or even as Paris; but exceeding in
grandeur the London or the Paris of that
day, as the Paris of to-day exceeds in ele-
gance the comparative squalor of the Paris
of three centuries ago. According to the
leather-covered little German book, the city
was beautiful beyond comparison with any
of the European cities of that period. I
should suppose that the author thought of
it as we do of Athens in the days of Pericles.
Not much is said of the inhabitants, who
were probably infinitely superior, socially,
to the rough 'voyagers of that date. And
for once the ' natives ' were neither bullied
nor ' converted,' Sir Francis departing no
richer than he arrived, save for a few com-
mercially valueless gifts. One thing the na-
tives, it seems, insisted on: Sir Francis ar-

A Strange Discovery 77

rived in the city without knowing his longi-
tude; and they compelled him on leaving to
accept conditions that prevented him from
finding his bearings till he was more than a
thousand miles away. What the nature of
the chmate was in this strange city may be
judged by the expressions employed in the
little book, which, translated, were equiva-
lent to ' perfect,' ' Eden-like,' ' balmy,' ' de-
licious.' Once the author compares this ant-
arctic city to Venice — admittedly to the
Venice of his imagination. No; Sir Francis
had nothing to brag of in this adventure;
and in those days when to be physically sub-
dued, or in a contest to fail to subdue others,
was a humiliation or even a disgrace, he
would have kept very quiet about the whole
affair; particularly as a future navigator
could not have found the city, even had Sir
Francis told all that he knew.

" Now I mention these reports only to
show you that others have thought of warm
antarctic lands; and I could refer you to
many other old stories and traditions, highly
suggestive of inhabited lands in the Antarc-
tic Ocean, on which lands a refined people
dwell. I certainly expect to learn from Pe-
ters facts of some importance to the world, if
only he does not die, or is not so delirious as
to throw a shadow on the verity of his story,

78 A Strange Discovery

even if lie does disclose the wonders which
I most assuredly believe that he will if he
lives but another day. Really, I am, for the
first time in years, excited. How Castleton
keeps so cool and so apparently indifferent
over this matter, when he is always excited
over what seem to me to be comparative
nothings, I cannot comprehend. Now,
sir, you hunt . him up again — he will no
doubt be in his office across the street.
Get his consent, as I before suggested —
Castleton is always obliging when you ap-
peal to him directly; then take your sup-
per, and be ready. I will be here at eight
o'clock with my horse and a piano-box
buggy. It will be a beautiful moonlight
night, and let us not risk waiting until
to-morrow. We will take with us some
ice; also wine, beef extract, and a few other
things intended to sustain the poor old fel-
low's vitality — at least till his story is told.
We must go prepared to remain for twenty-
four hours, or even for thirty-six hours if
necessary; so have your overcoat ready, and
I will find a couple of blankets in case we
have to lie down. Good-by till eight."

And off he went, as excited as a school-
boy at the ■ beginning of an adventure. I
began to think he was allowing his imagina-
tions to pray him tricks — purposely allow-

A Strange Discovery 79

ing himself to be deceived, as a child that
is Hearing the age of reason still delights in
the old fairy tales and the Santa Claus myth,
long after its mind has penetrated the de-
ception. Still, in the end it proved we were
very far — very far indeed from being upon
an idle quest.

By eight o'clock I had obtained Doctor
Castleton's consent that Bainbridge and I
might visit Peters, and remain as long as we
should desire.

" I will run out myself, early in the morn-
ing," said Castleton, " and do what I can to
keep life in the old man. Don't let Bain-
bridge get into the old fellow any of his new-
fangled, highfalutin remedies — if you do, I
will not answer for the consequences. I
don't say that Bainbridge will not in time —
in time, mark you — be a dazzling therapeu-
tist; but not until experience has modified
his views, and shown him that Rome was
not built in a day, nor with a toothpick,
either. Don't tell him what I say, please —
I wouldn't like to hurt his young feelings,
you know."

When Doctor Bainbridge drove up in
front of the hotel, I was waiting for him;
and we were soon on our way toward the
Peters domicile.

The Sixth Chapter

THE time required by Doctor Castle-
ton to reach the home of Dirk
Peters had been about forty min-
utes; the time required by Doctor
Bainbridge was two and one-half
times forty minutes, or only twenty minutes
short of two hours. Bainbridge drove a sin-
gle horse, a beautiful, large, dappled bay —
an excellent animal, which, as most horses
do, had learned those of his master's ways
that bore relation to his own interests. Bain-
bridge was a lover of animals, as Castleton
was not; Castleton was an admirer of horses
for their action, whilst with Bainbridge the
welfare of his horse was everything, and he
never drove rapidly without a particular and
pressing necessity.

So we drove along in a leisurely way, con-
versing of Dirk Peters and the Pym story,
until we had arranged a plan of action for
drawing out of the old man an account of

So

A Strange Discovery 8i

that voyqge, the mere thought of which,
coming suddenly upon him, had affected
him in the terrible manner which I had that
afternoon witnessed. Doctor Bainbridge
explained to me that the wild demonstra-
tions made by Peters and described by me
were a result, not so much of any thought of
those adventures on which he must have
pondered thousands of times in the forty-
eight or forty-nine intervening years, as it
was of the manner in which the thoughts or
mental pictures had been brought to his
mind.

" I need only remind you," he said, " of a
single mental characteristic within the ex-
perience of almost every person, to make this
matter clear, and to indicate what our course
with the old man must be, and why I said
to you to come prepared for a long stay.
Suppose, for instance, a woman to have lost
her husband through some extremely pain-
ful accident, his death being not only sudden
but of a horrifying nature, and that several
years have elapsed since she was widowed.
Now, she has thought the matter over ten
thousand times, as the suggestion to do so
entered her mind by a hundred different
routes, as, for instance, by the seeing of
something that her husband in life possessed,
or by the drift of her own thought bringing

82 A Strange Discovery

her to the subject by association or by in-
direct paths of suggestion. Every day her
mind has many times pictured the horrible
scene of death, until she is dry-eyed and pas-
sive amid a storm of sad ideas. But now,
after all these years, bring to her mind, sud-
denly and by a strange route of suggestion,
the same old horror — let a voice, and partic-
ularly the voice of a stranger, remind her of
the terrible scene — ^and immediately the
demonstration follows : the sobs of anguish,
the tears, all, as on the day of the accident.
It is the method of approach — the mode of
suggestion when the fact is known but la-
tent in consciousness, that is responsible for
the nervous demonstration. In another in-
stance, visual suggestion might have a simi-
lar result and audible suggestion be harm-
less. I anticipate no serious obstruction in
the path to Peters' confidence. Patience,
care, deliberate action — the fact ever in
mind that ' The more haste the less speed,'
and we shall win the prize for which we
strive."

As we drove along in the bright moon-
light, after we had determined on our
" method of approach " to Peters' mind, I
felt confident that with the knowledge and
tact of Bainbridge we should certainly suc-
ceed in our efforts; and I began to think

A Strange Discovery 83

along other lines. The friendly manner in
which I had been treated by all whom I had
met in America, from the millionaire coal
operator down to the bell-boy, came into
my thoughts. I had not been treated as a
foreigner, except to my own advantage, the
older residents of the town seeming to
look upon me more as they might look upon
a man from another State of the Union. In
America, even the inland towns are cos-
mopolitan, while in England only the larger
cities and seaport towns have that char-
acteristic. I was therefore able to judge
of certain questions not only from hear-
say, but from actual observation. I no-
ticed, for example, that among the Ameri-
can working-classes there existed a feeling
of repugnance for the Chinaman. Of the
lower-class Italian, everybody thought
enough to keep out of his reach after dark.
Germans and Irishmen were numerous, and
each individual was taken on his own merits.
The English were universally liked, wher-
ever I went. True, there was a little ten-
dency to allude to the glories of Bunker Hill
and the like; but this tendency was evinced
in a manner rather amusing than objection-
able to an Englishman. If there exists in
the American heart a drop of bitterness for
the English, I never discovered it. I am

84 -A Strange Discovery

writing now of the American-bom Ameri-
can. I gathered the idea that Frenchmen,
as seen in America, were scarcely taken seri-
ously; though all Americans have been sys-
tematically educated to respect and admire
the French Nation. Of Spaniards, the prev-
alent idea seemed to be that they were bet-
ter at arm's length. (Anglo-Saxon litera-
ture has been very unkind to the Spaniard.)
I did not meet an American that seemed to
hate anybody — I do not conceive it possible
for an American to harbor the feeling of
hatred.

As we jogged along, the idea entered my
mind that I would, when I returned home,
write a treatise on " American Manners and
Customs." " No doubt," I said to myself,
" I can in the next few minutes procure from
Bainbridge enough facts to make quite a
book." I afterward abandoned the inten-
tion ; but at that moment my mind was filled
with it. So 1 decided to ask my companion
a few leading questions, noting well his re-
plies. " And I will first," I determined with-
in myself, " inquire into the mooted point
concerning the existence of an aristocratic
feeling in the United States. Some of our
English writers on ' American Manners and
Customs,' and our most acute analysts of
American character, say that the Americans

A Strange Discovery 85

are great snobs, and are only too glad to
claim the possession of even the most dis-
tant aristocratic connection;" so I broached
the subject to Bainbridge.

" It interests me to convince you," he be-
gan, in reply, "that in the United States
there is scarcely a vestige of aristocratic
feeling. In fact as in theory, there is in this
country but one class of people. Such sup-
posed barriers as wealth and political posi-
tion are only partitions of paper — relative
nothings. I do not mention heredity, be-
cause in the United States all attempts to
establish a family line result in the family
rotting before it gets ripe. The only pre-
tence to hereditary pride which we have
here, exists in two States; in one of them
some four or five hundred persons cannot
forget that their forefathers got to shore be-
fore somebody else; and in the other a few
families still dispute over the threadbare
question of whose great-great-grandmother
cost the most pounds of tobacco. Now, can-
didly — is this sufficient to justify a reproach
from Europe that we are striving to claim or
to create an aristocracy ?

" And then there is that other reproach —
we're such outrageous tuft-hunters. I shall
not deny having seen an American run
himself out of breath to get a peep at a

86 A Strang Discovery

duke, but I never knew an American spend
money to see one, unless the American was
too beastly rich to care for money at all.
And then, hereditary nobles do not wear
well here. Let a visiting duke be followed
within a year by anything less than a king,
and the visitor will fail to excite anybody out
of a walk. You must not in England judge
of this subject from the effect on our people
of a certain not remote visit; for the people
of the United States have a feeling of respect
and affection for the present royal family of
Great Britain which no other royal family or
individual, past or present, has ever pro-
duced. Hum, hum! Our people mean
well; but curiosity and imitation will not
die out of the human race till an inch or two
more of the spinal column drops off."

Still with a -view to the gathering of facts
for my intended treatise, I asked Bainbridge
to explain in what distinctive manner the
people of the United States were benefited
by a republican form of government. He
replied that he knew nothing worth men-
tioning of the science of government, and
had never been outside of the United States.

" But," he continued, " I can tell you
something of what the whole people of this
country enjoy. And to begin with, there is,
as I have intimated, in the United States but

A Strange Discovery 87

one class of people, aside from the criminal
class common to all lands, and that vicious
but not relatively numerous element which
lives on the borderland between respecta-
bility and actual crime. This truth seems
sometimes to be questioned in Europe^ — -
why, I can but guess. Who would attempt
to enter the nurseries and school-rooms of
our land to-day, and, by inquiring as to the
parentage of the children, select from among
them any approximation to those from
whom are to come, in twenty or thirty years,
the men that shall then govern our States,
sit in our National Congress, direct our
army and navy, and control our commerce?
I have heard that in Europe it is rather the
exception for a son to reach exalted position
when the father has earned a living by man-
ual labor. In the United States this is not
the exception, but the rule. At this moment
the positions alluded to are here filled by the
sons of poor fathers. With us, inherited
wealth appears to be rather a detriment than
an aid to political advancement of more than
a petty kind. ' And yet,' you may say, ' your
people are not always satisfied.' No advanc-
ing, upward-looking people is ever satisfied.
With such a people, too, the demagogue is a
natural product; and the demagogue period
of this country is at hand. But there will

88 A Strange Discovery

never be a tom-fool revolutibh in this fair
land. The people here know that when they
have universal suffrage and majority rule
they've pulled the last hair out of the end of
the cat's tail for them."

I made a remark, to which Bainbridge re-
plied :

" Yes, we managed to finish up a pretty
fair revolution here some twelve years ago;
but that revolution was caused by a dis-
agreement about the R. of B. Now "

" Pardon me," I said " but what was the
'R. ofB?'"

" Oh, excuse me," he answered. " The
R. of B. was the Relic of Barbarism, human
slavery — the only relic the United States has
ever had, too."

I prided myself that the material for my
book was piling up at a great rate ; and I de-
termined to persevere.

" How about the feeling of dislike of
Americans for the English, of which we have
heard so much in England?" I asked. " Not
that I have had any evidence of such a feel-
ing."

"That is a plant which has finally withered
away in spite of some careful artificial culti-
vation. The politician who shall attempt to
build on any such feeling against England
(a statesman will never desire to make the

A Strange Discovery 89

attempt) will soon leafn his mistake. Oh,
I suppose it pleases some Americans to think
we got the best of our mother in 1783 — such
a big, strong, wealthy mother, too. A little
bit of talk doesn't hurt her any, and it does
some of us a heap of good. When a boy
runs away from home, half the glory and fun
is in being missed ; and if the folks at home
won't say they miss him, why, he must say
all the louder that they are mourning over
the loss. But I will say to you — and I say
it with the fullest conviction of its truth —
that the people of the United States could
not in any way be induced to take up arms
against Great Britain, save in their own un-
divided interest. Individually, as you al-
ready know, I love England — not England's
fops, but her people; I love the literature of
England, I love her memories, I esteem and
admire her well-executed laws. The litera-
ture of England has been my mental food
from boyhood — aye, almost from infancy;
and her memories, her memories ! I think of
London as Macaulay must have thought of
Athens. Decent Americans — that is, a ma-
jority — don't listen to jingo politicians; and
new arrivals with a grievance against Eng-
land are left to the vis medicatrix naturw.
There'll never be another war between Eng-
land and the United States. Our Anglo-

90 A Strange Discovery

Saxon element think normally ; and the vast
majority of our German citizens have al-
ways been on the sensible and morally right
side of national questions — ^there's nothing
long-haired or cranky about them. I like
the Germans because they don't hanker
after the unknown. I believe that most read-
ing Americans — that is to say threerfourths
of all — feel toward England as Irving and
Hawthorne did. — But, from your descrip-
tion, that must be the home of Peters, just
ahead of us."

He was right; and we stopped in front of
the old sailor's house. An aged man, appar-
ently a coal miner, came to the door as our
buggy stopped. We called him to us and
inquired concerning Peters, who he told us
was quietly sleeping. Then we asked with
regard to stabling accommodations, and
learned that Peters had an old unused stable,
the last old horse that he had owned having
preceded its master into the beyond. The
old miner offered to care for our horse; so
we gathered up our supplies, and entered the
little log house that contained so much of in-
terest for us. We found Peters asleep.

Making ourselves as comfortable as cir-
cumstances would permit, we awaited de-
velopments. At about midnight Peters
awoke. He asked for a drink of water.

A Strange Discovery 91

which was given to him. His voice was fee-
ble, and I saw that Bainbridge felt doubtful
as to the length of time that Peters might
remain alive and be able to talk intelligently.
But after we had given him a little diluted
port, and followed it with a cup of prepared
beef extract, his actions betokened less
weakness, his voice in particular gaining in
strength. The poor old fellow had been of
necessity much neglected, and our efforts to
arouse him met with decidedly good results.
All through the night we gratified every
want which he expressed, and attended to
every need of his that our own minds could
suggest. No attempt was made to draw
from him any information concerning his
strange voyage; but, on the advice of Bain-
bridge, we occasionally spoke aloud to each
other, and now and then to Peters himself —
always on indifferent topics. This was done
to familiarize the old sailor with our voices;
and as far as we could do so without any pos-
sible injury to him, we kept a light in the
room, that he should become accustomed to
our appearance. From time to time Bain-
bridge would step to the bedside, and place
his hand on the old man's forehead; and
later he would every now and then put an
arm about the invalid's body, and raise him
up to take a swallow of nourishment or wine.

92 A Strange Discovery

Before morning, Bainbridge had reached a
stage of familiarity that permitted him to
sit on the edge of Peters' bed and talk to the
old fellow briefly and quietly about his farm,
and of Doctor Castleton's goodness and abil-
ity, and on other subjects presumably inter-
esting to the invalid. Bainbridge would
gently pat the poor old man on a shoulder,
and smooth his head-^somewhat as one
does in making the acquaintance of a big
dog. By morning Peters was thoroughly
accustomed to our presence; and he seemed
to take our watchfulness as a matter of
course, and even to look for our attentions
as a kind of fight. He had slept several
hours through the night, and at five o'clock
was awake and seemingly much improved.
Not the slightest delirium, even of the pas-
sive form — in fact, nothing of a nature that
could alarm or disconcert us, had occurred.
Bainbridge had mentioned eight o'clock as
about the time he would broach the subject
of subjects to Peters, intending, as a matter
of course, to lead up to it by very tactful
gradations, passing from journeys in the ab-
stract to the journeys in the concrete, thence
to sea voyages, and thence, perhaps, to some
mention of recent arctic (not antarctic) ex-
plorations; and then, asking no questions
yet, to proceed to a mention of Nantucket,

A Strange Discovery 93

from which vantage ground the propriety of
risking a mention of the name Barnard
would be considered. If up to this point all
went well, a more pointed question or allu-
sion might well be risked — the brig Gram-
pus, for instance, might be named; and then,
without more delay than should be neces-
sary for Peters' rest, we might hope to elicit
the whole story of that wonderful voyage of
discovery, the evidence of the completion of
which certainly appeared to be before our
eyes in the form of Dirk Peters, the returned
voyager to the South Pole, in person.

At six o'clock we prepared our own break-
fast, and enjoyed it, sweetened as it was by
a night in the pure country air, and seasoned
with the anticipation of marvellous discover-
ies, involving the mysteries of a strange land,
no doubt teeming with amazing surprises,
and, as we felt that we had reason to believe,
peopled by a race of beings with customs
and attributes extremely wonderful.

We had just arisen from our breakfast
when a buggy drove rapidly up to the house,
and stopped; and we heard the voice of
Doctor Castleton, shouting something to
the old miner, who had gone forth a moment
before to care for Bainbridge's horse.

The Seventh Chapter

DOCTOR CASTLETON entered
the sick-room with his usual im-
petuosity, saluting us jointly in an
off-hand but courteous manner as
he crossed the floor to the bedside
of Peters, and took one of the invalid's wrists
in his hand.

"Ah," he said; "better! The quinine of
yesterday has done its work; the bed-time
dose of calomel has gone through the liver
and stirred-up that enemy of human health
and happiness, the bile; and the morning
dose of salts will, beyond a peradventure,
soon be heard from. Now we will throw
the whiskey toddy into him, and plenty of it,
too; and — yes, we'll go on with the quinine,
repeat the calomel to-night, and have him
ready for something else by to-morrow."

Now I never like to mention doubtful in-
cidents in such a manner as to suggest my
own belief in them; but I then suspected,

9+

A Strange Discovery 95

and I am now morally certain, that Doctor
Bainbridge had, in assuming the care of Pe-
ters, failed to execute medical orders, and
had administered only remedies or pretended
remedies of his own, so as to prevent Peters,
myself, and the attending physician from de-
tecting any omissions. This, I am aware, is
a terrible charge to make — still, I make it :
Peters did not get a fourth, if any, of the
medicines left for him by Doctor Castleton
during the time that Bainbridge cared for
the old man.

But if Bainbridge had, with the intention
of prolonging the life of Peters, and with
greater confidence in his own professional
judgment than in that of Castleton, omitted
the remedies prescribed, it was soon apparent
that the deception might prove in vain. I
have already intimated that the older physi-
cian's perceptions and intuitions were so
quick as sometimes to appear almost un-
canny; and after asking a question or two,
he began to pour upon a square of white
paper, from a small vial which he took from
one of his vest pockets, a very heavy white
powder; and we soon perceived that the
powder was to be poured from the paper to
the invalid's tongue. Bainbridge was in-
terested in Peters — not only selfishly and
with a motive to learn the facts of the old

96 A Strange Discovery

sailor's strange voyage; but he was also in-
terested in the poor old wreck for the sake
of the man himself. I saw that in the opinion
of Bainbridge, if that white powder were ad-
ministered to the invalid it would injure him
— probably weaken him, and cause a relapse,
and perhaps even an earlier death than
otherwise might occur; and I saw that Bain-
bridge was really apprehensive and annoyed.
At last he suggested to Castleton to delay
the administration of the intended remedy,
if only for a few hours. And when Castleton
called attention to his own view of the ne-
cessity for quick action, involving the in-
stant administration of the dose, it would
obviously have been so unwise to contradict
him, that Bainbridge did not risk such a
course. But, over-anxious to gain his point,
he did something still more impolitic. He
suggested a remedy of his own by which,
he said, Peters would speedily be relieved —
a new drug, I believe, or at least a remedy
not known to Castleton. For a moment I
looked for an explosion of offended dignity;
but Castleton controlled his first impulse,
and, not looking at Bainbridge, he centred
his apparent attention wholly upon myself,
and with exceedingly grave vigor, said,

" I, sir, am a member of the Clare County
Medical Society — I was once President of

A Strange Discovery 97

that learned body, and have since then for
seven consecutive years been its Secretary —
my penmanship being illegible to the other
members, and often to myself, preventing
many disagreements, by precluding a suc-
cessful reference to the minutes of past meet-
ings. Now, sir, tell me, as man to man, can
I consult with, or listen to suggestions —
even to suggestions, though worthy of a gi-
gantic intellect — can I listen to suggestions
coming from the mentality of a non-member
of our learn-ed body? Before replying, let
me say that our society is known throughout
all of Egypt — that is, you know, Egypt, Il-
linois. When a medical savant in Paris, or
Leipsic, or London, alleges a discovery, we
determine the questions of its originality and
its value — the chief purpose of our meeting,
however, being to present our own discov-
eries. Now, sir, I appeal to you whether our
rules should or should not be strictly obeyed
— and the second clause of section three of
those rules and regulations — an ethical ne-
cessity, and found in the ethical codes of all
well-regulated medical societies the world
over — says that a member shall not meet in
consultation a non-member, even to save a
human life — a decidedly remote possibility."
He paused. Neither Bainbridge nor I
spoke. In fact, an expression of our thoughts

98 A Strange Discovery

would have been wholly unnecessary, as
Castleton appeared to comprehend what was
in our minds, as shown by his continued re-
marks.

" ' Liberality,' " you may say: " True,
there should be liberality in this eternal
world. Individually we are liberal — we are
gentlemen; but it is different with us when
you take us as a body. I am for harmony.
I admit that at our meetings we do some-
times fight like very devils — life is a conflict,
anyway. Sir, the country is full of cursed
heresies and growing schisms. — But let me
ask — ^not the doctor here, whom I respect
for his immense learning and Cyclopsian (I
mean large — not single-eyed) wisdom —
what his remedy would be? I ask you, sir,
not him."

Here Doctor Castleton stepped close to
my side, and speaking into my ear in a
ghastly whisper, said, " The ass isn't Regu-
lar ! " He then drew back, and looked at me
as if expecting astonishment on my part.

I then exchanged a few words with Bain-
bridge, and informed Castleton of the result.
" Ah, ha — ah, ha — indeed," he said, with zs,
near an approach to sarcasm as was possible
with him. " So my leam-ed young friend
thinks that an organ — the liver — weighing
nearly four pounds is to be moved with a

A Strange Discovery 99

hundredth of a drop of — of — anything!
Damn it, sir, am I awake? "

" Ask Doctor Castleton, sir, what portion
of a grain of small-pox virus it would require
to disseminate over a whole county, if not
checked, a dread disease? Ask him from
what an oak-tree grows? "

" Ask him," said Castleton, " how long it
takes an acorn to act. In this case we re-
quire celerity of action — ^force and penetra-
tion."

" Ask him," said Bainbridge, " if the sol^r
rays have celerity, and force, and penetra-
tion; and how much they weigh. It re-
quires fine shot to bring down the essence of
a disease "

" Tell him," shouted Castleton, " that the
liver is a mammoth that requires a twenty-
four-pounder to penetrate its hide. We
don't hunt the rhinoceros with bird-shot."

" Say to the gentleman," said Bainbridge,
slightly flushed, but still with dignity, " that
in this case the animal is not to be slaugh-
tered, but to be cured."

" Damme," said Castleton, " who says
slaughtered? — Have I, a surgeon of renown,
a gentlernan and a scholar, a member of the
County Society, sunk so low that I can be
called a murderer? Stop — stop where you
are — stop in time. Say to the Gentleman

loo A Strange Discovery

that he has gone too far — say that an apol-
ogy is in order — say that he treads the edge
of a living crater. I am dangerous — so my
friends say — devilish dangerous " — a smile
crossed the face of Bainbridge; and even so
slight and transient an appearance as a pass-
ing smile was not lost on Castleton, though
he seemed to be looking another way — " I
mean dangerous on the field of honor.

Quackery, sir, is my abhorrence "

" Come, come, gentlemen," I said, " you
are allowing your professional amour propre
to mislead you. Now," I continued, as-
suming an air of bonhomie, " it seems to me,
an outsider, that this whole difference might
easily be adjusted. Doctor Castleton here
advocates firing twenty-four-pound balls
into the patient, and Doctor Bainbridge
suggests peppering the invalid with bird-
shot. There is certainly room between the
bowlders for the bird-shot to slip, and the
one will not interfere with the other — I say,
give both. Doctor Castleton advises that
the dose be immediately given, whilst Doc-
tor Bainbridge appears to think four or five
hours hence the better time. I suggest a
compromise: let them be given an hour or
two hence. There seems to be also some
obstacle in the way of one of you giving the
other's medicine — so let me administer both

A Strange Discovery loi

the remedies. Now what possible objection
can be advanced to this? "

They both laughed; and as Castleton
would be on his way home in a few moments,
Bainbridge was thoroughly pleased with my
proposal. Castleton tacitly consented, and
in half a minute seemed to have forgotten
the episode — or, at most, gave indication of
remembrance only by an apparent desire to
be over-agreeable to Bainbridge. A mo-
ment later he said to me,

" My dear sir, I hastened my visit here
this morning out of consideration for your-
self. Last evening after you had departed,

Mr. called at the Loomis House to see

you. I happened to meet him as, in some
disappointment at having missed you, he
was leaving the hotel, where he had learned
that you might be gone for two days. I then
ofifered to deliver any message that he
should send to you, this morning. When
he was informed that you were but ten miles
away, in the country, he said that his busi-
ness with you was pressing; and he asked
if it would be possible for you to return to
town for a few hours this morning. Then I
said that I would convey to you his wishes,
and that if you so desired you could be
at your hotel before nine o'clock — at
which hour he said he would call at the

102 A strange Discovery

Loomis House, with the hope of meeting
you."

I thanked the doctor; and after consult-
ing Bainbridge, said I would avail myself of
the ofifer to return at once to Bellevue. I
appreciated that it would be Bainbridge and
not I who would have to manage Peters. It
was a disappointment to think of missing
Peters' story at first-hand; but I hoped to
return by the middle of the afternoon, and
I knew that Bainbridge could repeat with
accuracy all that the old sailor should say.
I doubted whether Bainbridge could ex-
tract very much from the old man's senile
intellect before my return, as the aged voy-
ager was, both in mind and body, quite
feeble, and of little endurance. Besides,
when once started and warmed to his sub-
ject — and very little information could be
gained till he was so started — he would no
doubt be garrulous.

Doctor Castleton and I started for town
at a brisk trot, the doctor having parted
from Bainbridge in the best of humors. His
last words, shouted back as we drove off,
were, " Don't forget the calomel at nine-
thirty, doctor; and add to the treatment
whatever you may think best. I trust you
implicitly. Send me word if you need help."

Strange man ! So pleasant, and so harsh;

A Strange Discovery 103

so grand, and so ignoble; so great, and so
small; so broad, and so narrow; so kind,
and so unkind. As my mind ran along in
this channel, I wondered how one and the
same man. could express the views that he
had proclaimed in connection with his medi-
cal association, and yet speak of Hfe and
death as he had spoken to me on the day
preceding. What did he really believe?
Could the actor-temperament, displaying it-
self on most occasions, in connection with a
display at times of his natural self, as we say,
account for all his eccentricities?

As we fairly flew along the forest road,
nearing our destination by a mile in each
three minutes, we came to the only hill on
the entire route which was considerable,
both in extent and in degree of gradient.
Doctor Castleton allowed the gait of his
horses to slacken into a slow walk; and —
ever nervous, ever active — he reached into
the side pocket of his linen duster, and drew
forth a small book, apparently fresh from
the publisher.

" ' The Mistakes of the Gods, and Other
Lectures,' " he said, looking at the back of
the volume, and reading its title. " Ah,
' The Gods.' The title, sir, almost tells the
whole story; and so far as you and I are con-
cerned, it is almost a waste of time for us to

104 ^ Strange Discovery

open the book — and a crime against them-
selves for ignorant men to do so."

" The author must be one of your ' holy
terrors ' that I hear mentioned," I said. " A
Western ' bad man ' no doubt. Sad ! sad !
is it not? "

" Oh, no, no ; the author is not a cow-boy
— he's a perfect gentleman — as polished as
I am; and there's nothing very sad in the
book. It contains several lectures in the
line of agnostic agitation, which were from
time to time delivered by a very talented,
• but, as I think, mistaken man. When I say
mistaken, I do not mean mistaken in the
sense that our church people might apply
the term to him; for our church people seem
to misunderstand him, almost as greatly as
he misapprehends the purposes of nine-
teenth - century Anglo - Saxon Christian
workers. But mark my words, sir, you will
soon, in England, hear of this young ' infi-
del ' lecturer; for with his keen brain, his in-
vincible logic, his concise and beautiful rhet-
oric, he will soon be recognized as the most
popular living agnostic. His home is not
far distant from Bellevue, and I have fre-
quently heard him lecture. I think him the
best platform orator I have ever listened to,
though I have twice been charmed by the
eloquence of Phillips, and a dozen times by

A Strange Discovery 105

that of Beecher. I shall not outrage your
own and my own manhood by alluding to
anything which the more partisan church
people say of this brilliant agnostic; and I
say what I do, only because in your distant
home you may some day wonder just what is
behind an agnostic demonstration such as
he is leading up to, and which is certain to
centralize the dissatisfied spirit of the coun-
try into an anti-church propaganda of no
mean proportions. I am opposed to such a
movement; but I believe in truth as the
only durable weapon, and I love truth for
truth's sake — I should refuse to enter the
gateway of heaven if liars were admitted. I
cannot go into the history of this man, but
this much is fact : There are reasons which
cause him to believe that in striking at
Christianity he is performing a highly praise-
worthy action. In this belief he is as sincere
and as enthusiastic in his cold logical way,
as is any Christian in his belief. If duplicity
were possible to this man — or if he could
have found it consistent with his sense of
right even to keep silence concerning his
opinion on religious subjects — he would by
this time have been Governor of Illinois;
and, with his ability, there is no elective of-
fice in the country to which he might not
aspire with reasonable certainty of success.

io6 A Strange Discovery

He himself is aware of all this, as are all who
know him. At the early age of thirty-three,
before his views were generally known, he
was our Attorney-General. No political
party will ever again dare to nominate him
for an office."

" This is all wrong," I said; " it savors of
religious persecution."

" True," said Castleton, " it does; but the
fact is as I state it. He would if he ran for
office lose enough votes from his own party
to allow his opponent to win."

" But, my dear doctor," I said, " I fail to
catch your reasons for thinking this man
mistaken. You surely would not have him
be untrue to himself? "

" Oh, no — never that ! I mean that he is
intellectually mistaken in thinking that the
world is still to be benefited by agnostic agi-
tation among the masses. Voltaire had a
good reason for proclaiming and teaching
his views, because in France, in his day, re-
ligious infidelity was necessary to political
liberty. Tom Paine had a good reason for
his course, because Christianity, misrepre-
sented at that time by mistaken or corrupt
men, was arrayed on the side of the despot,
and so continued up to the beginning of the
French Revolution. But this man has no
good excuse for a fight against church in-

A Strange Discovery 107

fluence in the United States, now in 1877.
The influence of the Christian church is now
ce^rtainly exerted for good, and does not at-
tempt to restrict the liberty of any man, or
of society."

" But did you not just say that this ag-
nostic's views would forever prevent his
election to public office, here in this great
free country, in the year 1877 ^^^ onward? "

" We cannot have a free country and not
allow a man to vote against another, even if
his vote were influenced by the cut of a can-
didate's trousers."

" Yes," I said; " but if the cut of a candi-
date's trousers influenced a man's vote, such
a man would be a good object for education.
Your agnostic would no doubt say that the
influence of church is to be fought so long
as it judges of a man's capability to do one
thing well by his opinion on a totally differ-
ent subject."

" You will never educate the people out of
their prejudices; but I myself should vote
against this man because his course shows
his views to be inconsistent with statesman-
ship. No person desires to restrict another's
individual opinions; we only combat this
man's because of their effects, as he combats
those of his opponents. There are as many
agnostics, proportionally, that would not

io8 A Strange Discovery

vote for a Presbyterian, for instance, for
public office, as there are Presbyterians who,
under Hke circumstances, would not vote for
an agnostic."

" But in what way does the belief, or want
of belief, of an agnostic, prevent an other-
wise able man from being a statesman? " I
asked.

" No doubt some of the best statesmen
living are agnostics; but they are not ag-
nostic agitators. Men who are able to di-
gest and assimilate agnostic opinions, are
able to initiate those ideas for themselves;
and only men who are able to properly di-
gest and assimilate such ideas should have
them at all."

" Can you," I asked, " state an instance
in which what you indicate as premature ed-
ucation of the masses in agnostic ideas,
might lead to injury to the persons so in-
structed, or to society at large? "

" Yes, sir, I can. Your ignorant Ameri-
can — the ' cracker ' element of the South,
your ignorant Italian, and your ignorant
Irishman are injured by taking away their
religious beliefs. The first of these, when
church people, dress neatly, are honorable,
and have some upward-tending ambitions;
whilst those of them that are infidels are re-
duced — men and women — ^to a state of am-

A Strange Discovery 109

bitionless inertia and tobacco saturation — if
no worse. The two latter are either under
religious control, or under secret-society
control. If the lower-class Irishman or Ital-
ian, unendowed with judgment to rightly
use the little knowledge he already possesses
— to properly interpret his own feelings or
guide his own impulses — ^has not his church
with its priestly control, he will have his
secret-society with its secret executive con-
trol, its bovine fury, and its senseless per-
tinacity, the poison-bowl and the dagger.
For my part, if a man must either seek lib-
erty from ambush, and learn independence
through treachery, or else be on his knees
before a graven image, suited to his mental
calibre — let us keep him on his knees till he
can rise to something better than murder.
Why, sir, an Irish Republican (a rarity) — an
editor, once said to me that some of our Irish
emigrants have hair on their teeth when
they get to America; and, though I may be
wrong, I never see an Italian organ-grinder
without first thinking of a dagger between
my ribs, and then settling down to a com-
fortable feeling that if the fellow's a Catholic
the confessional stands between me and such
a danger. The man who attempts to teach
such fellows about complete liberty should
be responsible for any consequent acts."

no A Strange Discovery

" Still, doctor," I said, " the road to uni-
versal knowledge cannot be all smooth.
Ground must be broken by somebody. If
there is anything in Christianity that bars
the way to final freedom of mind for the
whole human race, then I myself say, clear
away the obstructions — the work cannot be-
gin too soon or continue too vigorously."

"I see nothing in true Christianity but
good for the human race — surely you speak
only to call out my own views. If there is
anything in any church policy or polity
which requires reforming, let it be re-
formed."

" Excuse me, doctor," I said; " but I had
thought you yourself an agnostic. Do you
not think that if a religion will not bear the
test of cold reason, it should be discarded
from the lives of men? "

" No, I do not. The human mind is not
comprised in intellect alone — ^it has its moral
or emotional side, wholly apart from reason.
Religion is not to be reasoned about — ^it is
to be felt. No founder of a religion ever
claimed for it a place in man's reason. Now
just think for a minute. Let us leave the
ignorant, and consider what the best of men
are — men who have attained a mental culti-
vation certainly as great as will ever be pos-
sible to the masses. Take the very highest

A Strange Discovery in

society in England and America — to what
extent are its members controlled by reason,
and to what extent by feeling and by the
fixed sentiments growing out of feeling?
Ratiocination does not influence one of their
actions in a million. There is not within my
knowledge a single instance where a purely
rational conception has been the basis of
practice, in opposition to feeling."

" Surely," I said, " you do not mean to
say that educated men are not governed in
the main by reason? "

" I mean just what I say — that I do not
know, in practice, a single instance in which
they are so governed in opposition to feeling.
Pshaw, pshaw! young man; if we are to
compel the acts of practical daily life to con-
form with a dialectic demonstration of what
is best for us — to do only what is in reason
best for us — we must simply cease to live,
though we do continue to breathe. Even in
physics, of what use are logical demonstra-
tions, when the premises are only a founda-
tion more unstable than quicksand — purely
provisional?

" Now if these agnostics were truthful —
which they try to be; and were consistent —
which they are not, they would be in a try-
ing situation. Reason shows no advantage
to a man in kissing his wife; he has no syl-

112 A strange Discovery

logistic endorsement for supporting her and
the children; in fact, he has no business to
have children — ^all the result of feeling or
sentiment, all rubbish, and beneath the in-
tellect of a man who worships Pure Reason!
And if the demands of man's moral or aflfec-
tional nature are a reason for such indul-
gences, then his aspirations to the great
primal cause of the known, the unknown,
and (to us here and now) unknowable won-
ders and mysteries of the universe without,
and of ourselves within, is also justifiable in
reason, and ought not by wit and eloquence
to be juggled out of the ingenuous mind.
The masses are governed by religion, di-
rectly and indirectly, to an extent much
greater than at first thought appears. The
daily life of the agnostic himself is shaped
by his Christian heredity and environment.
Now our Author furnishes no substitute for
this intuitive demand of being. If reason
can supply nothing in place of religion, why
not allow those who possess religious con-
viction to retain so agreeable, and to others
beneficial, a belief? — Now right here I can
detect the voice of the agnostic agitator —
this is his strongest situation, and he simply
smiles when you make this opening for him.
The voice says, ' Agreeable? Agreeable to
burn forever in hell? Well, well, my friend

A Strange Discovery 113

— our ideas of pleasure differ.' This is
sophistical twaddle. It is not the Christian
that suffers from a fear of hell — it is the sin-
ner, through his guilty conscience. Con-
science, conscience; the only barrier be-
tween us and hell on earth ! Christians are
comforted by the thought of a loving Christ
— Christians, in my experience, do not suf-
fer."

" Why, sir," I said, " I cannot but wonder
that you are not yourself a professed Chris-
tian."

" Never mind me, young man. — But here
we are on the edge of town. I could, if I
wanted to, preach a sermon capable of con-
verting every heathen within sound of my
voice. Once, at a camp-meeting, I did
preach a sermon; and I tell you, the old peo-
ple looked mighty sober, and the younger
and more susceptible of my auditors covered
their faces with their hands and seemed to
shake with grief and contrition. But, pshaw,
pshaw; people don't go to hear either witty
agnostics lecture, or preachers preach, to
get something for their brain-boxes to rea-
son about. Believe me " — tapping the vol-
ume, still in his hand — " this sort of thing
won't make anybody reason. After all, the
question is one of swapping off Christ for an
Illinois lawyer."

The Eighth Chapter

IT lacked half an hour of nine o'clock as
we drove up before the Loomis House,
where I alighted, and ran up to my
rooms. I had scarcely more than made
a hasty toilet, when Arthur came in.
After telling me who had, during my ab-
sence, called to see me, and after attending
to some trifling wants which I expressed, he
shuffled his feet in a style that I had learned
to recognize as indicating a desire to say
something not within the compass of our
purely business relationship — a liberty
which the precedents of our first two days
of acquaintanceship in connection with later
events had solidified into a vested right.
" Well, Arthur? " I said.

" I read the whole book, sir — there it is,
on the table. That book just did get me.
But what did become of Pym and Peters?
And is it true you've found that old soc-doli-
gin' pirate? "

114

A Strange Discovery 115

I told him that Peters was found.

" Well, now ! " he continued. " I 'd like to
see the old four-foot-eighter. But if you
love me, tell me what that white curtain
reachin' down from the sky was, and what
made the ocean bilin' hot? What made
them ante-artic niggers so 'fraid of every-
thing white, and what was the hiryglificks
on the black marble meant to say? And,
most of all, who was the female that stood
in the way of the boat? Say — I don't blame
anybody — but if Mr. Poe knowed he didn't
know these points, what did he get our
mouths waterin' for? Did you find out
these points yet? "

I explained to him that probably at that
very moment Doctor Bainbridge was sitting
on the edge of Dirk Peters' cot, drinking in
the wonderful story; and that as soon as a
certain gentleman had called to see me, I ex-
pected to return to Peters' house, and to re-
main until we knew all.

" Go slow," said Arthur, " and don't fall
down on any importing points. Better take
time, and catch everything. I asked Doctor
Castleton last night what made that ocean
bile; and he said he guessed the mouth of
hell was down that way, and Satin had just
opened the door to air out. That's him; if
it ain't heaven it's got to be hell. But how

ii6 A Strange Discovery

old Peters ever lived this long with Castle-
ton monkeyin' with him is a mighty funny
thing. — But who's that? "

A rap had sounded on my door. My
caller had arrived.

I did not succeed in getting back to Bain-
bridge and Peters so soon as I had expected.
My business in the town dragged along far
into the evening, and it was nine o'clock by
the time I was at liberty. At ten o'clock I
sent for a conveyance, and was driven to
Peters' house, where I arrived just before
midnight.

I found Peters sleeping soundly, and
Bainbridge dozing in a chair. My entrance
aroused Bainbridge. He arose, smiling, and
was apparently glad to see me. I saw at a
glance that he had been successful in ob-
taining from Peters the secrets of his ant-
arctic voyage. " Well? " I asked.

" The information which I have gained,"
said Bainbi'idge, " even could I procure no
more, would suffice to explain all those mys-
teries that Poe hints at as fact, and much
that he seems to apprehend with that sixth
sense which in the genius approaches a
union of clairvoyance and prescience —
mysteries of which he does not speak in lan-
guage sufficiently clear for common com-
prehension. At all events, I am not disap-

A Strange Discovery 117

pointed;, and more may yet be proctired.
There remains much of interest, in the way
of minutics, which I expect to learn to-mor-
row. I know now what made that antarctic
region more than tropical, and what the
white curtain was — and is. I know how the
hieroglyphics came in the caverns of black
marl. That antarctic country exceeds, in the
truly wonderful, anything in the world, old
or new, with which I am acquainted, or of
which I have heard."

" But is it true? Have you not been lis-
tening to fairy tales? — or, rather, to sailor
tales?"

" When to-morrow I tell you what I have,
hour after hour, with brief rests, drawn from
that poor old battered hulk " — he pointed
toward Peters' cot — " and when you con-
sider what he is — then say if he is the man,
or his sailor friends are the men, to invent
such a story. I admit that at times during
the day his mind seemed to wander slightly,
and that he has the usual faculty of sea-far-
ing men for exaggeration; so that at times
I had to employ my best discrimination to
enable me to separate the real from the fanci-
ful, that I might retain the true and discard
the untrue. He seems to have lived for more
than a year in proximity to the South Pole,
and his experiences were as marvellous as

ii8 A Strange Discovery

that country is strangely grand, and. its peo-
ple truly wonderful — Oh, no — nothing on
the Gulliver order; the people are not dwarfs
or giants, and they 'have no horses either
that talk or that do not talk; no yahoos —
nothing in that line. ' Wings? ' Oh, no —
no flying men or women, no women in
gauze, either; everything quite in good
taste and genteel. Just wait, now; you'll
hear it all in an orderly way — ^which I my-
self did not, however. ' One-eyed? ' I told
you, just now, that it was all in good taste
and genteel. No, no; nothing Homeric —
no sheep, and no sirens. Now, I'm really
tired, and you'll not succeed in starting m.e
on a story that'll take six or eight hours to
tell, even if we do not stop to discuss matters
as we progress. To-morrow, as I before
said, we will get from Peters all other possi-
ble facts, and no doubt we shall gather fur-
ther particulars; then we will go to town.
I intend to come out here every day till
Peters gets better or dies — and I suppose
you will not refuse to keep me company.
Every evening we will meet in my rooms, or
in yours, and I will recite the stoi-y in my
own way. Now does that satisfy you? "

It satisfied me fully, I said; and then we
spread our blankets, and made a night of it
on the floor.

A Strange Discovery 119

The next day Bainbridge spent the fore-
noon, for the most part, sitting on the edge
of Dirk Peters' cot, listening to the old man
talk, describe, explain. I walked out, and
explored the immediately adjacent country,
entertaining myself as best I could. At
about two o'clock in the afternoon we
started for town, leaving Peters much better
than when two days before we had first, to-
gether, entered his humble home. We
promised to see him the next day; and, in
fact, one or both of us returned each day for
many succeeding days. That evening Doc-
tor Bainbridge came to my rooms, and be-
gan the recitation of Dirk Peters' story ; and
that, too, was continued from day to day.

And it is now time that the patient reader
should also know the secrets of that far-dis-
tant antarctic region — secrets of which Poe
himself died in ignorance — save as the
genius, the seer, knows the wonders of
heaven and earth — sees gems that lie in hid-
den places, and flowers that bloom obscure-
ly, and feels the mysteries of ocean depths,
and all that is so far — or near, so great — or
small, that common vision sees it not.

The Ninth Chapter

THERE may be among my readers
some who have never read " The
Narrative of A. Gordon Pym," or
have so long ago perused that in-
teresting and mysterious concep-
tion, that they have forgotten even the out-
lines of the story. It is the purpose of the
present chapter to review a few of the in-
cidents in that narrative, a knowledge of
which will add to the clearer understanding
of Peters' story.

Those who are familiar with Edgar Allan
Poe's admirable and entrancing narrative
just mentioned, are aware that it is written
in autobiographical form, the facts for the
most part being furnished by Pym in the
shape of journal or diary entries, which are
edited by Mr. Poe. For such readers it will
be but a waste of time to peruse the present
chapter, brief though it is. And let me fur-
ther say to any chance reader of mine who

A Strange Discovery 121

has never had opportunity to enjoy that ex-
citing and edifying work of America's great
genius of prose fiction, that he is to be
envied the possession of the belated pleasure
that awaits him — only a treasured memory
of which delight remains to the rest of us.

From my own narrative I shall omit much
of description and colloquy which, during its
development in 1877, occurred concerning
discoveries of a geographical and geological
nature, and alsO' many discussions of a char-
acter purely philosophical; but no fact shall
be discarded. The historian has, in my
opinion, no discretionary power concerning
the introduction or elimination of facts. His
duty is plain, and in the present instance it
shall be faithfully performed.

The following presents a very general out-
line of " The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym" :

In the year 1827, Pym, just verging upon
manhood, runs away from his home in the
town of Nantucket, on the island of the same
name, in companionship with his boy friend,
Augustus Barnard, son of the captain of the
ship on which they depart. The name of
the brig on which they embark is the
Grampus, which is starting for a trading
voyage in the South Pacific Ocean. Young
Barnard secretes Pym in the hold of the brig,
to remain hidden until so far from land as to

122 A Strange Discovery

make a return of the runaway impracticable.
Pym, hidden amid the freightage of the hold,
falls into a prolonged slumber, probably
caused by the foul air in that part of the ves-
sel. When the brig is four days at sea, a
majority of the crew mutiny; and after kill-
ing many of those who have not joined them.
Captain Barnard is set adrift in a small boat,
without food and with only a jug of water.
Young Barnard is permitted to remain on
the vessel. There is a dog that plays a lead-
ing part in the mutiny episode by acting as
a messenger between Barnard and Pym,
who had no other means of communicating.

Next comes a counter mutiny, made nec-
essary to preserve the life of one Peters, a
sailor to whom Barnard owes his life. The
ship's cook is determined to kill Peters, and
is about to accomplish his purpose, when
Peters, young Barnard, and a sailor named
Parker, who joins the two, devise a plan for
overcoming the mutineers of the " cook's
party." This they succeeded in doing by,
at the right moment, producing from his
hiding-place young Pym, who is dressed to
resemble a certain murdered sailor whose
corpse is still on the brig; and during the
fright of the " cook's party," Peters and
Parker kill the cook and his followers.

Then the four — Barnard, Pym, Peters,

A Strange Discovery 123

and the sailor Parker — have many thrilling
adventures. The brig is finally wrecked in
a storm, and only the inverted hull remains
above water, to which the four cling for
many days. The party is at last rescued by a
trading-vessel on its way to discover new
lands in the Antarctic Ocean. They reach
83° south latitude, soon after which a land-
ing is made on an island inhabited by a tribe
of strange black people. Here, through a
trick of the islanders, the crew lose their
lives — all save Pym and Peters. Parker had
already died, and in a manner more enter-
taining to the reader in the perusal than to
Parker in the performance; and which,
Peters said forty-nine years later, the mere
thought of, always made him willing to wait
for his supper when he had of necessity to
forego a dinner.

Whilst escaping in a small boat from this
island, Pym and Peters abduct one of the
male natives. Like his fellows, this native
is black, even to his teeth; in fact, there is
nothing white on the whole island; even the
water has its peculiarities. And also like
his fellows, he dreads the color white; and
whenever he sees anything white he be-
comes almost frenzied or paralyzed with ter-
ror. The small boat with its three occu-
pants is carried on an ocean current, to the

124 -^ strange Discovery

south. One day Pym, in taking a white
handkerchief from his pocket allows the
wind to flare it into the face of the black isl-
ander, who sinks in convulsions to the bot-
tom of the boat, later moaning (as had
moaned the other islanders on seeing white),
"Tekeli-li, tekeli-li." He continued to
breathe, and no more. The following day
the body of a white animal floats by, a body
similar to one which they had seen on the
beach of the island last visited. Then they
see in the south a white curtain, which, after
their further progress in its direction, they
observe reaches from the sky to the water.
The water of the ocean current which is
hurrying them along becomes hour by hour
warmer, and finally hot. An ash-like ma-
terial, which seems to melt as it touches the
water, falls all around and over them.
Gigantic white birds fly from beyond the
white curtain, screaming the eternal " Teke-
li-li, tekeli-li " — a syllabication that dies
away on the lips of the islander as his soul
finally, on that last terrible day, leaves his
body.

The last words of the last of Pym's entries
in his journal are as follows :

" And now we rushed into the embraces
of the cataract, where a chasm threw itself
open to receive us. But there arose in our
pathway a shrouded human figure, very far

A Strange Discovery 125

larger in its proportions than any dweller
among men. And the hue of the skin of the
figure was of the perfect whiteness of the
snow."

The following description of Dirk Peters
as he appeared in the year 1827, or just fifty
years before I saw him, apparently a man of
seventy-five years (though we finally con-
cluded that he was nearer eighty), is Pym's,
quoted from Foe's narrative :

" This man was the son of an Indian
woman of the tribe of Upsarokas, who live
among fastnesses of the Black Hills, near
the source of the Missouri. His father was
a fur-trader, I believe, or at least connected
in some manner with the Indian trading-
posts on Lewis River. Peters himself was
one of the most ferocious-looking men I
ever beheld. He was short in stature, not
more than four feet eight inches high, but
his limbs were of Herculean mould. His
hands, especially, were so enormously thick
and broad as hardly to retain a human shape.
His arms, as well as his legs, were bowed in
the most singular manner, and appeared to
possess no flexibility whatever. His head
was equally deformed, being of immense
size, with an indentation on the crown (like
that on the head of most negroes) and en-
tirely bald. To conceal this latter deficiency,

126 A Strange Discovery

which did not proceed from old age, he usu-
ally wore a wig formed of any hair-like ma-
terial which presented itself — occasionally
the slcin of a Spanish dog or American
grizzly bear. At the time spoken of, he had
on a portion of one of these bear-skins; and
it added no little to the natural ferocity of his
countenance, which betook of the Upsaroka
character. The mouth extended nearly from
ear to ear; the lips were thin, and seemed,
like some other portions of his frame, to be
devoid of natural pliancy, so that the ruling
expression never varied under the influence
of any emotion whatever. This ruling ex-
pression may be conceived when it is con-
sidered that the teeth were exceedingly long
and protruding, and were never even par-
tially covered, in any instance, by the lips. To
pass this man with a casual glance, one might
imagine him to be convulsed with laughter ;
but a second look would induce a shudder-
ing acknowledgment, that if such an ex-
pression were indicative of merriment, the
merriment must be that of a demon. Of
this singular being many anecdotes were
prevalent among the seafaring men of Nan-
tucket. These anecdotes went to prove his
prodigious strengthwhen under excitement,
and some of them had given rise to a doubt
of his sanity."

The Story o f
DiRK Peters

The Tenth Chapter

DURING the early evening of the
day on which Doctor Bainbridge
and I returned from our stay with
Dirk Peters, I sat in my room at the
Loomis House, impatiently await-
ing the moment when Bainbridge was to
arrive. I knew that he was wearied by his
labors with Peters, and I did not anticipate
a prolonged talk from him. Still, I was
anxious to hear at least a beginning of the
promised story. At the appointed time he
came in, and placing a roll of paper on the
table, took the large easy-chair which I had
placed for him.

" As I know," he said, " that the develop-
ments of the past three days must, quite
naturally, have developed a curiosity in you
of some intensity to hear the sequel of the
Pym adventures, I shall endeavor not to
keep you unnecessarily waiting; but shall
allay at once a portion of your curiosity.

I2g

1,30 A Strange Discovery

Later — to-morrow, if agreeable — I will deal
with the particulars of that strange voyage
— perhaps the strangest ever made by man."

He picked up, and smoothed out upon the
table, the roll of paper which he had brought
with him; and then continued :

" In the first place, I will briefly and in a
very general way describe for you the south
polar region, which, I feel certain, Pym and
Peters reached, and where they resided foir
somewhat more than one year. Here is a
map which I have with some care drawn
from rough sketches jotted down as I sat
on the edge of Peters' cot, and each of which
sketches I had him verify.

" Now move this way with your chair, and
look at this map. And in the first place, I
will tell you that at the South Pole — proba-
bly not precisely at the pole, but certainly
within the sixth of a degree of it — is a circu-
lar surface of absolutely white-hot, boiling
lava, about fifteen miles in diameter. This
surface was, in ages past, as indicated by
surroundings, many times its present sur-
face extent — say from seventy to seventy-
five miles across. No doubt the surface
of the earth at the Antarctic Pole had once
cooled, and later become covered with
water, though with very shallow water —
probably at some points by none, at others

\S-vr\>\«» "cj" "^q'Viw.VVft 4\\u(xt"\ttn ^ovOft\"?o\t
». H>i^c^ o^"UoV \C\N(X- ^ YvVMV<.\oYtt)i''v*v»ic*' Wlti-t| "fc&.

T. F.T. HHYa-f\ri» Ottcvn . wlft viW*\£ii

U

&co,\4. o"^ TnU^t

Vt c\\tf.Y.X,

7"/?^ South Polar Region and Hilililand.

A Strange Discovery 131

by a depth of ten or fifteen feet. From some
cause — and many causes might be imagined
— this earth-and-water surface of say two
hundred miles in circumference, sank into
the interior of the earth, and the boiling lava
came to the surface. We can scarcely con-
ceive of the awful effect when the Antarctic
Sea poured over the circumference of this
mass of boiling earth and metal.

"Now it must be considered that this
boiling lava was not merely a great surface of
white-hot matter, in which case it would,
relatively speaking, soon have cooled. To
flood its edges with an overflow of ten feet
of water would be comparable to running a
film of water a hundredth of an inch in depth
over the top of a red-hot stove in which
a large fire continues to burn and constantly
to renew the heat on its surface. This sur-
face of boiling lava must have had a practi-
cally limitless depth, and the water which
poured over it must have evaporated in-
stantly. After thinking the matter over,
with the data which I have well in view, I
concluded that it required about two hun-
dred years for the water to reach the limit
which it finally attained as water en masse.
A little thought on the subject has shown
me that Peters is telling the truth, because
his description, to my mind, harmonizes with

132 A Strange Discovery

the laws of physics. One of the earliest phe-
nomena presented by this condition, was
that so much sea-water evaporated, and
evaporated so rapidly, that masses of rock-
salt formed, creating a partial barrier to the
inroads of the sea — I say a partial barrier,
because the deliquescence of salt would
cause it to be the poorest of all barriers to
water. Still, we must remember that the
immediately surrounding water must have
reached, so far as salt is concerned, the sat-
uration point, and would have been a very
slow solvent of hard rock-salt in enormous
masses and several miles in extent. Then,
two other conditions soon arose : First, the
warm surrounding water permitted a coral-
like development, as shown by present ap-
pearances, and second, volcanic action be-
gan.

" Now look at my map. This inner circle
represents the present area of boiling lava,
which, as I have said, is about fifteen miles
in diameter — the South Pole, according to
the natives, being at about the point corre-
sponding to this dot, marked ' a.' The
ring next without the circle I have made to
represent a zone of lava which is at its inner
edge white-hot, and at its outer edge red-
hot, its width, let us say, as the division is
arbitrary, about four miles. The second cir-

A Strange Discovery 133

cle represents a zone of lava which is dull
red at its inner edge, and black, but hot, at
its outer. Of course the lava blends away
from white-hot within, to barely warm with-
out; but I thus map it, the better to picture
reigning conditions. The next circle, some
four or five miles in width, represents a ring
of cold lava-blocks, masses of rock-salt, and
animalculine remains, from twenty-five to
two hundred feet high. Outside of this last-
mentioned zone, we have several rings of
volcanic mountains with intervening valleys,
and many active craters at the summit of
mountains; while on the mountain-sides lie
numerous masses of rock-salt, thrown from
below by eruptive action, glistening in the
brilliant volcanic light, and slowly deliques-
cing. This zone of mountains and valleys is
from ten to twenty miles in width, and whilst
in the main its mountains are not more than
from half a mile to a mile high, it contains
peaks of five or six miles in height, and there
is one peak which rises nine miles above the
sea-level.

" I want you to look particularly at these
larger mountain-ranges, one at the right,
the other at the left side of my map — each of
which as it stretches out into the sea divides
into two smaller chains. Upon these ranges,
and the comparatively diminutive height of

134 -^ Strange Discovery

the intervening mountains, in connection
with the fact that there is a constant wind-
current from the lower Pacific (generally-
speaking, from the west of longitude 74°
W.), depends the habitability of this large isl-
and, the Island of Hili-li (here represented in
about longitude 75° E.), and many other isl-
ands which stretch out in the same direction
from this enormous active surface-crater. I
say that upon such conditions depends the
habitability of these islands, and so I believe;
but there is another cause for their greater
than tropical warmth: If you will glance
here on the right of this map, in the midst of
the mountain zone you will see represented
a bay, which, winding among mountains,
makes its way very close to the zone of hot
lava — in fact, is divided from it by little more
than the ring of lava-blocks, rock-salt, and
animal remains, which at this point is nar-
rowed to a width of about two miles. The
temperature of the water of this bay at its
inner extremity is probably about 180° F. —
say 32° below the boiling-point of distilled
water; and it flows in a steady current past
the Island of Hili-li. This bay is undoubt-
edly fed from the opposite side of the great
crater, and its supply flows for miles in con-
tact with hot lava. It is probable that this
extremely warm water current greatly as-

A Strange Discovery 135

sists the hot-air current in creating the super-
tropical climate of Hili-li.

" And now, as I have in part satisfied
your curiosity, and as I am somewhat ex-
hausted with my two days' and nights'
experience with Peters, I know you will
permit me to rest at so suitable a stopping-
point. To-morrow evening I will take up
the story of Dirk Peters where it joins the
sudden break in Pym's journal, and will
carry you along to the time when the inhabi-
tants of Hili-li thought that the atmosphere
of some other land would be more condu-
cive to Peters' longevity and health, as well
as to their own tranquillity. And I assure
your Sultanship, that the story I shall relate
to you to-morrow night will be more inter-
esting than the dry physical facts which I
have this evening imparted, and which it
seemed best that you should know before
hearing in consecutive detail the particulars
of Peters' voyage."

I assented to his suggestions, thanking
him for the clear description which he had
given of that strange region, and for the
pains he had taken to draft of it so accurate
a map — rwhich map he allowed me to retain.
I was about to ask a question, when the door
opened, and Doctor Castleton rushed into
the room.

136 A Strange Discovery

" Well, how's the old man? " he asked.

We described Peters' condition; and I
even recounted a few of the facts which
Bainbridge had just imparted to me. Then
I asked the question which Castleton's
abrupt entry had delayed.

" But," I asked, " has not Peters' imag-
ination, owing to the administration of
drugs, been unnaturally stimulated? There
are drugs which it is commonly believed
may have a wonderful effect in stimulating
the imagination to flights of marvellous
grandeur."

"No," said Bainbridge. "The doctor
here will say the same. No drug on earth
could produce even an approach to such an
efifect."

" Certainly not," said Castleton. " The
mass of laymen are not only ignorant — ex-
cuse me, sir, but I know you want the facts
— not only ignorant, but extremely and per-
sistently ignorant on this subject. I have
heard it said that Byron drank twelve — or
perhaps twenty — bottles of wine the night
he wrote ' The Corsair.' If he did, he sim-
ply wrote ' The Corsair ' in spite of the wine.
I have heard it stated that Poe was intoxi-
cated when he wrote ' The Raven ' — ^which
is not only an untrue statement but one that
could not possibly be true, and which cer-

A Styange Discovery 137

tainly every man who ever attempted to
write under the influence of an alcoholic stim-
ulant knows to be false. Drugs — including
alcohol — which are supposed to stimu-
late what we might term a rational imag-
ination, only stimulate an irrational fancy.
They seem to the person afifected to cause a
play of imagination, but they really produce
only a state of nervous action which causes
their subject to feel appreciation of other-
wise trifling mental pictures that in them-
selves are flimsy nothings. Let a man so af-
fected try to impart to another his fancies,
and — well, who has not been bored by a
drunken man? Did De Quincey, with that
superb mind, succeed in fancying anything
that even he could tell? He speaks of glow-
ing drug-born fancies, but he describes
nothings. Now Milton, the old Puritan —
the cold-water man — he had fancies which
he was able to transmit, and which are
worthy to be forever treasured. The early
Greeks were exceedingly temperate, and the
men who composed the ' Nostoi ' were not
drunkards — Homer sang the ' Iliad ' and the
' Odyssey ' with a sober tongue, and a sober
brain back of his utterances. The man who
gets drunk to write poetry, will find it easier
to write his poetry on the following morn-
ing, spite of headache, blue-devils, and all."

138 A Strange Discovery

He paused for a moment; and then this
p.eculiar man continued :

"And I know! Why, sir, I have drunk
barrels of whiskey — barrels of the stuff. I
have seen whiskey-snakes in squirming
masses three feet deep. I have gone into a
parlor, and had a lady say when she saw me
fumbling in my pockets : ' Doctor, your
handkerchief is in your back pocket.' Bless
her ! I was only putting back into my pock-
ets the jim-jam snake-heads as the snakes
would try to emerge! I pity a weak devil
that goes home and to bed because of a mild
attack of delirium tremens. I brush the
vipers away with a sweep of my hand, and go
about my business. But I myself draw the
line at roosters. A man who may laugh at
snakes will quail before roosters. A fellow
may shut his eyes to snakes, but he can't
shut his ears to roosters. Well, well: it's
all in a life-time. But, believe me, no good
poetry, either in verse or in prose, is drunk-
enman poetry."

With which final remark he shot out of
the room. Then Doctor Bainbridge took his
departure, and I retired to sleep and to
dream of fiery craters, with snakes crawling
out of them, and gigantic roosters picking
up the snakes one by one and dropping them
over a mountain of salt into a lake of boil-

A Strange Discovery 139

ing water. I was pleased when morning
came, and I heard the comparatively cheer-
ing tinkle from bells on the team of mules
drawing the little " bob-tail " street-car past
the hotel.

The Eleventh Chapter

ON the following evening Bainbridge
came to my room as he had prom-
ised, arriving at about eight
o'clock. I had not that day accom-
panied him on his visit to Peters,
who it seems was daily gaining strength.
I had spent my day in reading, except that
Arthur had repeatedly come to my room, re-
maining for fifteen or twenty minutes at a
time as his duties would permit, being cu-
rious to learn from me " some of the things
about that ante-arctic country," etc. He was
much interested in the subject, and studied
with close attention the map made by Doctor
Bainbridge. Arthur had asked permission
to be present when the doctor should come
in the evening, but I thought better to deny
him that privilege. Doctor Bainbridge was
taking the matter seriously, and I knew Ar-
thur too well to expect from him a decorous

reticence at any time. I could imagine the
140

A Strange Discovery 141

effect on Bainbridge as he dosed some glow-
ing description, should Arthur jump up with
a remark about " ante-arctic niggers," or
" gee whallopin big females." I had occa-
sion later to know that my caution was most
judicious, and to condemn myself for a want
of firmness in maintaining so sensible a de-
cision.

Doctor Bainbridge, without unnecessary
delay or preliminary remark, began the rela-
tion of Peters' adventures at the point indi-
cated by him the evening before as the
proper place of commencement.

" The great white curtain you have no
doubt already surmised to be a clear-cut line
of dense fog, due to the fact that a perpen-
dicular plane of extremely cold air in that
situation cuts through an atmosphere which,
on both sides of this sheet of frigid air, is ex-
ceedingly warm, and laden with moisture to
the saturation-point. This curtain of fog is
so thin that sudden gusts of wind, upon
either of its surfaces, drive it aside much as
a double curtain is thrown on either side by
the arms of a person passing between. It
was through such an opening that Pym and
Peters rushed, on a cross-current of warm
water which was carrying them along. The
figure of a large, pure-white woman, into
whose arms their half-delirious fancies pict-

142 A Strange Discovery

ured them as rushing, was simply a large
statue of spotless marble, which stands at
the entrance of the bay of Hili-li. The ash-
like material which for days had rained upon
them and into the ocean around them, was
no longer seen. It proved to have been a
peculiar volcano-dust or crater-ash, which,
carried into the upper air, fell at a distance
— sometimes directly on Hili-li; but rarely
so close as within eighty or ninety miles of
the central fire.

" They had scarcely passed the white fog-
curtain when they were accosted by a gay
party of yoimg men and young women,
numbering some eight or ten persons, in an
elegant pleasure-boat. Pym and Peters be-
ing ignorant of the language of Hili-liland,
and the Hili-lites being ignorant of the Eng-
lish tongue, it was of course impossible for
them to hold converse beyond that permitted
by signs. The pleasure-party, however, saw
at once that the two men were almost ready
to expire from want of food and rest. The
Hili-lites took them into their own spatious
boat, and hastened to a landing-place in the
suburbs of the capital and metropolis of the
nation, Hili-li City. There they all disem-
barked, and the strangers were supported
across a lawn, the grass of which was of the
palest green — (so nearly white, in fact, that

A Strange Discovery 143

its greenness of tint would scarcely have
been noticed but for the contrast afforded
by many brilliant white flowers that ap-
peared here and there amid the grass) —
up to a palace, the equal of which, for size
and beauty, neither of the Americans had
before seen, though Pym was familiar with
the external appearance of the finest resi-
dences in and about Boston, and also of
those on the Hudson River just above New
York; whilst Peters had been in most of the
sea-coast cities of the habitable world.

" They were taken into this palace, were
immediately escorted to the bath (which
Peters declined to enter), were furnished
with liquid nourishments, and were then al-
lowed to sleep — ^which both of them did, un-
interruptedly, for twenty-four hours. When
they awoke they were furnished with new
clothing of the best (the Hili-lites dressed
something in the style of Louis XIV.), and
then invited to a full repast. So well were
they treated that in less than a week they
felt quite as strong and otherwise natural
as they had on leaving the harbor of Nan-
tucket.

" So elegant and expressive, yet so sim-
ple was the language of Hili-li, that Pym
could in two weeks understand and speak
it sufficiently well for ordinary converse;

144 ^ Strange Discovery

whilst Peters was able to employ it suf-
ficiently for his purposes, in about a month.
" The residents of the palace seemed to
comprehend just about what had happened
to the strangers. It appears that once or
twice in a century strangers similar in gen-
eral exterior to this pair had arrived in that
region, generally in small boats, and on one
occasion in a ship; but none of the strangers
had desired to depart from a land so beauti-
ful, to undertake a voyage both long and
hazardous — none save the persons who had
come in a ship nearly three centuries before
— (you will recall what I told you of the
small book that I read in the Astor Li-
brary). As there was little which the Hili-
lites had any desire to learn from the strang-
ers, there was not much to be said, anyway.
Pym and Peters were permitted to roam at
will, and many Hili-lites came to look at
them. The palace in which they were per-
mitted to reside belonged to a cousin of the
king, so that no troublesome surveillance
was inflicted upon these wrecked sailors — in
fact, so completely isolated were the two,
that no feelings except a mild degree of sym-
pathy and curiosity were excited by their
presence on the island. A small boat was
at their disposal, and they soon almost daily
took the liberty of rowing across the har-

A Strange Discovery 145

bor to the wharf at the end of the main
street of Hili-li, where they would disem-
bark, and wander for hours around this
strange old city, viewing in wonderment its
beauties, its peculiarities, its mysteries.

" Hili-li is a city of from one to two hun-
dred thousand people. But, oh, lovely be-
yond power of language to describe! — past
all conception, and comparable alone with
fancies such as float through the brain of
poet-lover as he lies dreaming of his sotil's
desire. I draw my conclusions from Peters'
state of mind when he attempts to describe
this strange city, rather than from what he
says; and also from some of Pym's remarks
on the subject, which Peters was able to
repeat.

" In your imagination, compass within an
area two miles in diameter the choicest beau-
ties of ancient Greece and Egypt, Rome and
Persia; then brighten them with natural
surrounding scenery such as Homer and
Dante and Milton might have dreamed of —
and you may feel a little of what Pym and
Peters felt when first they saw this glorious
island. In ancient Greece a true democrat
would have been displeased with the ex-
treme discrepancy between the grandeur of
public buildings, and the poverty of private
dwellings; but in Hili-li these two bore a

146 A Strange Discovery

perfectly just relationship of elegance, each
in its way being perfect.

" Yet mere inanimate beauties were the
least of all. Even Peters, old and dying —
never a man to whom art spoke in more than
whispers — even he was aroused from the
arms of death when he spoke of the women
of Hili-li. ' Were they blondes? ' I asked
him. ' No.' ' Were they brunettes? ' ' No.'
They were simply entrancing — never to be
forgotten. Each and everyone of them, like
Helen, won by her mere presence the adora-
tion of man. And the men — even they must
have been superb — were types of perfect
manly elegance.

" I spent many hours in trying to draw
from Peters facts which I might put together
and so become competent to explain the
perfection, physical and mental — for they
possessed both of these charms — of the Hili-
lites. And after combining what Peters
could describe, and what he could recall of
Pym's sayings, with a statement or two of
the natives that clings in the old man's mem-
ory, I formed what I am able to assure you
is a reliable opinion of the origin of the Hili-
lite race :

" At about the most trying period of the
barbarian invasion of Southern Europe —
certainly preceding the foundation of Venice,

A Strange Discovery 147

and I think in the fourth century — when the
enlightened peoples of the Mediterranean
were fleeing hither and thither like rats in a
burning house from which but few escape —
during this fearful time, a number of men
with their families and a few slaves, took ad-
vantage of a momentary lull in the terrors
of the period, to save themselves. They pur-
chased a number of vessels, and loading each
with tools, seeds, animals, valued manu-
scripts, and all that they possessed worth
moving, started to seek a land in which they
might colonize, there in time to found a new
empire beyond the reach of all barbarians.
They passed out of the Mediterranean and
down the west coast of Africa. Fortunately
they had thoroughly anticipated storms and
wrecks, and each vessel was loaded in such a
manner as to be independent of the others.
When well on their way, one of those rare,
prolonged storms from the north came on,
and the vessels were soon driven far from
land, and separated, each from all the
others. One of these vessels managed to
outlive the terrific storm, which lasted for
thirty days; and when the winds abated, the
hundred or more men, women, children, and
slaves, found themselves among the islands
of what now is named Hili-liland. There
they settled — there, where nature furnishes,

148 A Strange Discovery

without labor, light and heat the year
round, and vegetation is literally perpetual.
They met with none of the initial difficulties
of primitive peoples. They were educated,
and they possessed the treasures of knowl-
edge born of a thousand years of Roman
supremacy; from the beginning they had
that other priceless treasure, leisure — that
real essential of perfect culture; they had
for the first five hundred years no human
enemy to contend with, and even then with
the merest weaklings — ^weaklings in the
hands of a people at that period very strong ;
for by that time the Hili-lites must have
numbered a million souls, or almost as
many as they now are. But of all that
they possessed, the rest would have been
comparatively little had they not retained
in lasting memory the lesson of Rome's
downfall — the price a people is compelled
to pay for prolonged and unbroken lux-
urious indolence. This lesson of the down-
fall of Rome they never forgot; and to-day,
with all their beauty and refinement, phys-
ical and mental effeminacy is left solely
to the women. True, it requires from each
inhabitant but a few hours of labor in the
year to supply all purely physical material
wants; but, beginning with the year of the
settlement of Hili-H, up to the present time,

A Strange Discovery 149

the wealthiest in the land has performed his
share of physical labor quite as conscien-
tiously as has the poorest. Then with them,
a man or woman is educated up to the time
of death. The children are taught as with
us, and the young men, and the young
women, too, take a college course. But
after the college course, they go on with
their study. A great jurist at forty, or for
that matter at seventy, concludes to make an
exhaustive study of astronomy — or, if earlier
in hfe he has exhausted all desire to know
the facts of astronomy, he perhaps begins a
study of anatomy — or whatever it may hap-
pen to please his fancy to investigate. The
Hili-lites claim that in this way those who
live to seventy or eighty acquire a fairly
good general education, but of this I have
my doubts. After the age of twenty, a man
does not devote more than two hours a day
to new branches of learning; but two hours
a day is sufficient time, if well employed, to
keep his mind always young and vigorous;
and it has been shown by this people that a
person under such a system retains more of
the buoyancy and freshness of youth at
eighty than do we in Europe and America
at the age of fifty.

" In Hili-liland the people have gone
much farther than we in the development

150 A Strange Discovery

of the purely reasoning faculties — in fact,
they have gone so far that they now ignore
reason almost completely, having carried
its development to a finality, and found
it comparatively worthless in the practical
afifairs of life. They claim — and seem by
their lives to prove — that, practically, so-
ciety is happier and more moral when it ex-
ists without any pretence that it is controlled
by anything else than by feeling — that is, as
a matter of course, by properly educated
feeling. Hili-li is a kingdom, but its people
must, from what I can learn, have as pure
and perfect a constitutional liberty as it
is possible for mankind to enjoy — not lib-
erty as the accident of a royal whim, but such
a perfect liberty as the people of England
are approaching, and in which by another
century they will be able to indulge them-
selves. They claim that as liberty does not
mean license, so government of self by feel-
ing and not by reason need not mean license
— and never will mean license when correct-
ly understood and properly directed — and
yet that such government alone brings com-
plete happiness. This putting aside and
dwarfing of the reasoning faculty seems to
have resulted in an intuitional state of mind.
Peters says that the Hili-lites always seemed
to know what he was thinking about, and

A Strange Discovery 151

were always able to anticipate and thwart
his acts when they so desired.

" As I was able to gain from Peters in so
brief a time a very limited range of fact from
which to make correct deductions of impor-
tance, I did not expend much of that valu-
able time in seeking for descriptions of build-
ings; but I did learn sufficient in that
direction to satisfy me that, to the fund of
architectural knowledge brought by the an-
cestors of this people from Europe, they had,
during the centuries, added much that is new
and valuable, even sublime and truly mar-
vellous.

" But even here in this paradise on earth,
there is a criminal class — not very terrible,
but, legally, a criminal class. It seems that
a portion of the old, restless, warrior-spirit
must have trickled along in obscure by-
ways of the sanguineous system of many
of these people, for amiong the youths of
each generation several thousand out of the
whole population (residing on a hundred isl-
ands, large and small), would, despite every
eflfort of their elders, become unmanageable.
These — after each young man had been
given two or three opportunities to reform,
and in the end been judged incorrigible —
were banished to the mountain-ranges which
surround the great active surface-crater al-

152 A Strange Discovery

ready described, and which are from thirty
to eighty miles distant from the Capital of
Hili-li. There they might either freeze or
roast, as taste should dictate.

"To-morrow evening," concluded Bain-
bridge, " I shall relate some particulars in
the lives of Pym and Peters in Hili-liland.
The purely personal experiences of these
two adventurers I should ignore, were it not
that they take us into the region of the won-
derful crater and its peculiar surrounding
mountains and valleys, where we shall see
nature in one of the strangest of her many
strange guises." Then, after a second's
pause :

" Do you accompany me to see the poor
old fellow, to-morrow? "

I promised that I would; and we agreed
upon two o'clock as the time for starting.
Five minutes later Doctor Bainbridge arose,
and saying good-night, left me until the
morrow.

The Twelfth Chapter

THE next evening at the appointed
hour Doctor Bainbridge came in.
I had not been able to accompany
him in his daily visit to Peters. As
Bainbridge took his seat he said a
few words concerning the old sailor, who,
to the surprise, I think, of both physicians,
appeared to be recovering. They hoped for
scarcely more than a temporary improve-
ment, but a little longer life for the poor old
man seemed now assured.

Doctor Bainbridge glanced at the map of
Hili-li, which I had spread out on the table,
and began :

" In the ducal palace," said he, " in which
through the kindness of the younger mem-
bers of the household, Pym and Peters were
permitted to reside — at first only in the ser-
vants' quarters — the servants, however, be-
ing, at least in social manners, equal to the
strangers — there were, besides the imme-
153

154 -^ Strange Discovery

diate family of the duke, many more or less
close family connections. Among these was
a young woman, corresponding in her peri-
od of life to New England women in their
twentieth or twenty-first year, but really in
her sixteenth year. Now I should imagine
from the actions of that old sea-dog, Peters,
lying there in his seventy-eighth or seventy-
ninth year, and forty-nine years after he
last set eyes on the young woman, that she
must have been the loveliest being in a land
of exceeding loveliness. Her eyes, the old
man says, were in general like a tropical sky
in a dead calm, but on occasions they re-
sembled a tropical sky in a thunder-storm.
She had one of those broad faces in which
the cheeks stand out roundly, supporting in
merriment a hundred changing forms, and
laughing dimples enough to steal a heart of
adamant — the loveliest face, when it is love-
ly, in all the world. Her hair was golden, but
of the very lightest of pure gold — a golden
white; and when in the extreme warmth of
her island home she sat amid the trees, and it
was allowed to fall away in rippling waves —
to what then am I to liken it? It was trans-
cendently beautiful. I think that I can feel
its appearance. It must have looked like
the sun's shimmer on the sea-foam from
which rose Aphrodite; or like the glint from

A Strange Discovery 155

Cupid's golden arrow-heads as, later, sitting
by the side of Aphrodite, he floated along
the shores of queenly Hellas, in gleeful mis-
chief shooting landward and piercing many
a heart. Ah, love in youth ! The cold rea-
soning world shall never take away that
charm; and when the years shall cover
with senile snows those who have felt it,
then Intuition and not Reason shall give
Faith to them as the only substitute for
glories that have faded and gone.

" But the form of this lovely being — what
shall I say of her form! Here I pause.
When Peters, at my urgent solicitation, at-
tempted to describe it, he simply gurgled
away into one of his spells of delirium. It
was no use to try — though I did, again and
again, try to draw from the old man some-
thing definite. It seems that she was so
rounded and so proportioned as to meet
every artistic demand, and to divert even
from her beautiful face the glance of her en-
raptured beholders. If we are to gain an
approximate idea of a figure so perfect, we
must try to conceive what might be the re-
sult of a supreme effort of nature to show
by comparison to the most artistic of her
people just what puling infants they were in
their attempts to create forms of true beauty
from marble.

156 A Strange Discovery

" Her name was Lilama.

" It appears that young Pym was at this
time a handsome fellow, almost six feet tall;
and in his attire, of which I have spoken as
resembling in many respects that of the
court habitues of Louis XIV., he was in-
deed a fine example of natural and artificial
beauty combined. And then, he had suf-
fered! Need I say more? What heart of
maiden would not have softened to this
stranger youth?

Well, these two loved. From what Peters
tells me, the episode of Romeo and Juliet
sinks into insignificance by the side of the
story of their love. With leisure and with
opportunity to love, for several months
these young people enjoyed an earthly
heaven which it is rarely indeed the lot of a
young couple to enjoy. But alas ! and alas !
True as in the days when moonlight fell
amid the palaces of Babylon and Nineveh
is the old poetic expression — ^its truth older
than Shakespeare, older than historic man
— that ' The course of true love never did
run smooth.'

" It seems that among the so-called crim-
inal exiles to the Volcanic Mountains was a
young man of good family, who had known
— and of course loved — Lilama. And I will
say in passing that the youths who comprised

A Strange Discovery 157

this class would, the larger part of them,
never have been exiles, if Hili-li had required
a standing army, or had even not forbidden
by law the more rough and dangerous games
to be played — I allude to some very rough
sports and pastimes, in which bones were fre-
quently broken — games which these youths
and preceding generations of youths had in-
itiated and developed. But there was in Hili-
li, aside from boating, no allowable means
for the gratification of that desire to contend
with danger which is inherent in manly
youths the world over. Hence these young
men were by their very nature compelled to
violate laws thus unnatural, and, as gener-
ally happens, in doing so they went to ex-
tremes. The young Hili-lite to whom I have
alluded had been for more than a year with
the exiles. His name was Ahpilus. Lilama
did not reciprocate his love. She had known
him from infancy, and for her there was no
romance in poor Ahpilus. But the young
Hili-Iite was madly infatuated with her, and
it seems by later developments that his en-
forced absence from her had driven him al-
most, if not wholly, insane.

" Thus stood matters about three months
after the arrival in Hili-li of the Americans.
It will be remembered that, according to
Poe's account, Pym and Peters passed

158 A Strange Discovery

through the ' great white curtain ' on March
22d. Peters says that this statement is
probably correct. That date corresponds to
their autumnal equinox — about. Three
months later corresponds to our summer
solstice — their midwinter. By the latter
time, and for weeks before, the antarctic sun
never rose above the horizon. But this sea-
son was in Hili-li the most beautiful and en-
joyable period of the year. The open crater
of almost pure white boiling lava which I
have described, and which presented a sur-
face of the most brilliant light, covering an
area of more than 150 square miles, was am-
ply sufficient to light islands from 45 to 75
miles distant. Hili-li received some direct
light from a hundred or more volcanic fires
— two within its own shores; but by far the
greater illumination came from the reflected
light of the great central lake of boiling lava.
The sky, constantly filled with a circle of
high-floating clouds formed of volcanic dust,
the circumference of which blended away
beyond the horizon, but in the centre of
which, covering a space the diameter of
which was about thirty miles, was a circle
of light of about the same brilliancy as that
of the moon, but in appearance thousands of
times larger. From this overhanging cloud
(the City of Hili-li lay under a part of its

A Strange Discovery 159

circumference) came during the antarctic
winter a mild and beautiful light, whiter
than moonlight, and lighting the island to
many times the brilliancy of the brightest
moonlight, though quite subdued in com-
parison with that which would have been
derived from the sun if directly in the zenith.
Peters says that the illumination in Hili-li at
its midwinter was about as intense as with
us on a densely cloudy day; the light not,
however, being grayish, but of a pure white,
now and again briefly tinted with orange,
green, red, blue, and shades of other colors,
caused by local and temporary outbursts of
those colors in the enormous crater fires.

" I will digress for a moment longer from
the relation of those occurrences which de-
veloped out of Pym's love affair, to say a
word concerning some of the physical effects
of this artificial light, and to explain certain
facts related by Poe in his narrative of the
earlier adventures of our younger hero — I
say of our younger hero, because I cannot
determine in my own mind which of the two,
Pym or Peters, deserves to be called the
hero of their strange adventures.

" On the island of Hili-li the mean sum-
mer temperature was about 12° or 13°
Fahrenheit higher than that of winter. The
almost steady temperature of the island in

i6o A Strange Discovery

winter was 93° F. — occasionally dropping
two or three degrees, and, very rarely, ris-
ing one or two degrees. The extremes in
temperature during the year were caused by
the sun's relative position — constant sun-
light in summer, and its complete absence
in winter. Each year, by December — the
south-polar midsummer month — vegetation
has become colored; and its delicacy yet
brilliancy of tintage is then very beautiful,
and varied beyond that of perhaps any other
spot in the world. Peters has travelled over
much of the tropics and subtropics, and he
says that only in Florida has he seen any-
thing to compare with the beauty of Hili-li
vegetation in October and November. I
should imagine from what he says that the
coloring of vegetation is in great part the
merest tintage, the large admixture of white
giving to it a startling luminosity, and per-
mitting the fullest effect of those neutral
tints which are capable of combinations at
once so restful and so pleasing to the refined
eye. In the vegetation of Florida there is
luminosity; but chromatic depth, as in most
tropical coloring, is the chief characteristic
of its visual effect. To hear Peters talk of
the flowers of Hili-li, almost half a century
after he himself viewed them, is a sympa-
thetic treat to my sense of color. But for

A Strange Discovery 161

strangeness — and it was not without its ele-
ment of beauty, too — the vegetable growth
of July and August in that peculiar land must
exceed anything else of the kind known to
man. Think for a moment of the effect on
vegetable growth of warmth and moisture,
a rich soil, and the complete absence of sun-
light ! From the middle of their winter to
its close, though vegetation is luxuriant, it
is colorless; that is to say, it is apparently of
a pure white, though, on comparison, the
faintest shades of hue are discernible — a
very light gray and a cream color pre-
vailing. The peculiar grass of Hili-li, proba-
bly not indigenous yet certainly different in
form from any other grass, is very tender and
very luxuriant, but, even in their summer
months, has a pale, almost hueless though
luminous green ; whilst in winter it is almost
white. Many flowers bloom in the winter,
but they differ one from another only in
form and in odor — they are all quite hueless.
And this effect of artificial heat in connec-
tion with absence of sunlight has a similar
effect on animal life, the plumage of the
birds being a pure white. But in the appear-
ance of animals the summer sun does not
produce much change — in that of birds,
none whatever.

" This brings me to the point in Peters'

i62 A Strange Discovery

story at which I may most naturally explain
certain of Poe's statements — or, rather, of
A. Gordon Pym's statements — ^which have
caused more comment than any other part of
the narrative. Hand me your Poe, please. —
Here now: Poe says, quoting from Pym's
diary :

" ' On the seventeenth [of February,
1828], we set out with the determination of
examining more thoroughly the chasm of
black granite into which we had made our
way in the first search ' (this, you will recall,
was on the last island upon which they set
foot before being driven by winds and ocean
currents farther south. They were then in
hiding from the barbarians of that island,
and were only a few hundred miles from the
South Pole). ' We remembered that one of
the fissures in the sides of this pit had been
partially looked into, and we were anxious
to explore it, although with no expectation
of discovering here any opening. We found
no great difficulty in reaching the bottom of
the hollow as before, and were now suffi-
ciently calm to survey it with some atten-
tion. It was, indeed, one of the most singu-
lar-looking places imaginable, and we could
scarcely bring ourselves to believe it alto-
gether the work of nature.' He proceeds to
explain that the sides of the abyss had ap-

A Strange Discovery 163

parently never been connected, one surface
being of soapstone, the other of black marl.
The average breadth between the two cliffs
was sixty feet. Here are Pym's own words
again : ' Upon arriving within fifty feet of
the bottom [of the abyss] , a perfect regular-
ity commenced. The sides were now en-
tirely uniform in substance, in color and in
lateral direction, the material being a very
black and shining granite, and the distance
between the two sides, at all points, facing
each other, exactly twenty yards.' The diary
goes on to state that they explored three
chasms, and that in a fissure of the third of
these Peters discovered some ' singular-
looking indentures in the surface of the black
marl forming the termination of the cul-de-
sac' It is surmised by Pym and Peters that
the first of these indentures is possibly the
intentional representation of a human figure
standing erect, with outstretched arm; and
that the rest of them bore a resemblance to
alphabetical characters — such, at least, it
seems from Pym's diary, was the ' idle opin-
ion ' of Peters.* Pym later had a clew to the
meaning of these characters, and no doubt
recorded the facts in a later diary, many of
the pages of which Poe never saw. But if

* See Narrative of A. Gordon Pym, in any complete
edition of Poe's Works.

164 A Strange Discovery

Pym and Peters had analyzed more closely
the indentures, they might have gained at
least the shadow of. an idea of the meaning
of these representations. Pym made a copy
of them, as you know, and Poe here gives us
a fac-simile of that copy in his Narrative.
Peters now knows in a general way of what
these indentures were significant, and I will
in a moment explain to you their general
meaning; but first look at this fac-simile."

I drew up my chair to the side of Doctor
Bainbridge, and together we looked at the
representation of these indentures which
Poe has furnished us. Bainbridge contin-
ued:

" Now look at this first figure, which Pym
says ' might have been taken for the inten-
tional, though rude, representation of a hu-
man figure standing erect, with outstretch-
ed arm.' The arm, observe, is here — the arm
and forearm, to my mind, separated; and
directly above and parallel with the arm is
an arrow; and if we ti'ace out the points of
the compass as described in the diary, we
find that the arm is pointing to the south,
the arrow is pointing to the north; or in
other words, the arm points to Hili-li; the
arrow, by inference, back to the island on
which the indentures exist. Now among
most savages the arrow, as a symbol, repre-

A Strange Discovery 165

sents war — a fight — individual or even
tribal death.

" Many centuries preceding the time at
virhich Pym and Peters stood examining the
indentures in the black marl, and at least five
centuries after the foundation of Hili-li, the
natives of that zone of islands almost sur-
rounding the South Pole at a distance of
from three hundred to seven hundred miles,
were afifected by one of those waves of feel-
ing which perhaps once in a thotisand or sev-
eral thousand years sweeps aside all the
common inclinations of a people, and for
some reason which lies buried in unfathom-
able mystery moves them to a concerted ac-
tion not only unknown in the past of those
who participate in it, but, so far as can be
conceived, also unknown to the ancestors of
the actors. Such a wave of impulse, when it
comes, seems to afifect all the individuals
of every division of a race. In the example
to which I am alluding, the impulse seemed
spontaneously to move the inhabitants of
islands far apart, and apparently not in com-
munication — certainly not in direct commu-
nication. With the singleness of purpose
and uniformity of action seen in an army
under command of a leader, the natives of a
hundred antarctic islands swarmed into ten
thousand fragile boats, and directed their

i66 A Strange Discovery

course toward the south. Why toward the
south ? Did instinct tell them that by such a
course the various bands would converge to
a union? They knew not. The first few
boats arrived at Hili-li. Nine of every ten
of those that began the journey were lost
— but still, boats continued to arrive at the
islands of the Hili-li group. Then, and
after five hundred years of peace, the Hili-
lites saw that they were to be overrun by
barbarians, as their history told them their
ancestors had once, in distant lands, been
overrun. The Hili-lites did not have formid-
able weapons; but fortunately those of the
invaders were scarcely more eflficient. The
conflict came to a hand to hand engagement.
The invaders could not return, even had they
so desired; so they must fight and win, or die.
The Hili-lites had no place of retreat, even
had they been willing to flee; and they too
must fight and win, or die. The invaders
numbered more than a hundred thousand
men; the Hili-lites, about forty thousand
that were able to fight in such a battle. The
latter armed themselves with clubs about
four feet long, one inch in diameter at the
handle, two inches in diameter at the far-
ther extremity, and made of a wood similar
to the dense tropical lignum-vitas (almost
an inconceivable growth in that compara-

A Strange Discovery 167

tively sunless region); and, for additional
weapons, behind natural and artificial bar-
riers they heaped piles of lava-blocks, sharp,
jagged, and weighing each from one to five
pounds. The invaders had a few very flimsy
bows, scarcely six arrows to each bow — and
nothing else in the way of weapons. From
all sides, on came the invaders in their frail
boats, in one mad rush upon the main island
of Hili-li, where the Hili-lites had, including
their women, children, and aged men, gath-
ered.

" The invaders were ill-fed, tired out by a
sea-voyage exhausting almost past compre-
hension, ignorant, almost weaponless, and
making a charge in small boats; whilst for
them the favorable elements in the coming
battle were that they possessed five men for
each two of the defenders, and were impelled
by a mad, instinctive impulse to advance,
similar to that of a swarm of migratory lo-
custs, which advances even through fire, and
though it require the charred bodies of nine-
ty-nine thousand of their number over which
the remaining thousand may cross. The
Hili-lites were well-fed, not fatigued, intelli-
gent, comparatively well-armed, and were
on land, prepared for the battle; whilst they
possessed also the inherited Roman spirit,
once lost by their ancestors, but by the de-

i68 A Strange Discovery

scendants recovered amid new and pure sur-
roundings.

" Before a landing could be made, half
the invaders, in the confusion incident to a
bombardment with lava-blocks, were thrown
from their boats and drowned, or knocked
on the head as they swam ashore. Of the
other half, a third were killed as they at-
tempted to land, and another third within five
minutes after they reached the shore. Then
the remaining fifteen thousand or more
rushed back to their boats, only to find them
sunk in the shallow water near the shore —
it having been quite easy for eight or ten
Hili-lites to sink each boat, by bearing in
imison their weight on one gunwale — a
thousand or two young Hili-lites having
been assigned to that duty. Then the poor
wretches who remained threw down their
flimsy bows, and fell face-downward on the
ground, at the feet of the victors. Under the
circumstances, what could so noble a people
as were the Hili-lites do? They could not
slaughter in cold blood nearly twenty thou-
sand trembling human creatures. So it was
finally decided to build a thousand large-
sized row-boats, and it being the best time
of the year for that purpose, take them back
to their own islands. This was done. But
in punishment for their oft'ence, and as a con-

A Strange Discovery 169

stant reminder of the existence of the Hili-
lites — (who, as these savages knew, had de-
stroyed more than eighty thousand of their
number, with a loss of only twelve of their
own killed, and thirty-seven seriously
wounded — ^which fact, by the bye, Peters
says is inscribed on a monument in the City
of Hili-li, as well as recorded in the official
history of the Hili-lites) — as a constant re-
minder, I say, of a people so powerful, they
were cJrdered never, on any island in their
group, to display any object of a white color
— the national color of the Hili-lites. So
strict and inclusive was this command, that
the natives were ordered to take each of
their descendants as soon as his teeth ap-
peared, and color them with an indelible,
metallic blue-black dye, repeating the oper-
ation every year up to ten, and thereafter
once in five years. The command closed
with the statement that the natives would
be allowed to retain the whites of their eyes,
but only for the reason that, as they looked
at each other they would there, and only
there, see the national color of Hili-li, and so
have always in mind the promise of the vic-
tors, that if another descent on Hili-li were
ever attempted, no single native — man,
woman, or child — ^^vould be allowed to live.
In addition to this, the Hili-lites engraved

lyo A Strange Discovery

on a number of suitable rocks on each isl-
and an inscription, briefly recording a re-
minder of the terrible results of this attempt
at conquest, heading each inscription with
the rude representation of a man with arm
extended to the south, over which and paral-
lel with which was placed an arrow pointing
to the north — meaning, ' There is the direc-
tion in which a certain foolish people may go
to find quick death : from there comes war
and extermination ! '

" So effective were the means employed
by the Hili-lites to prevent future raids, that,
though the inhabitants of these islands had
again increased, probably to a million or
more, no second invasion had ever been at-
tempted by even the strongest and bravest
of their savage chiefs."

" Well," I said, as Bainbridge paused, and
seemed to be thinking just what to say next,
" what of the beautiful Lilama and the in-
fatuated Ahpilus? I hope poor Pym is not
to have so charming a love-feast broken
into by any untoward event. I must say,
Bainbridge, those Hili-lites were wonder-
fully careless of their loveliest women — of a
beautiful girl of sixteen, and so close to
royalty itself."

" Well, my cold-blooded friend, what will
you say when I tell you that Lilama was an
orphan, and had inherited from her father

A Strange Discovery 171

the only island in the archipelago upon
which precious stones were found, and that
even in that strange land she was wealthier
than the king? Had she been able to get
the products of her islands into the mar-
kets of the world, she would have been
wealthier than Croesus, the Count of Monte
Cristo and the Rothschilds, all combined.
However, in Hili-li, wealth was not — well,
not an all-powerful factor; important, but
not having the power which in the re-
mainder of the civilized world it possesses.
To have power, money must be able to
purchase human labor or its products, as
only by human power is all other force util-
ized. In Hili-li, a citizen possessed every-
thing that he required for his ordinary wants,
and it was almost impossible to purchase the
leisure time of any man. It was possible on
certain conditions to procure human labor,
but it was extremely difi&cult to do so.
Then, for seven or eight hundred years slav-
ery had been prohibited in the land, all exist-
ing slaves having been emancipated — after
which, in the course of a few generations,
Hili-lian history says, the slaves and the
slave-spirit were lost in the mass of the pop-
ulation.

" In thinking over the position of Lilama
and Pym, you must consider that the older
members of the family would probably not

172 A Strange Discovery

soon hear of such a thing as love between
these two, and, even when they did hear of
it, would have little doubt of being able to
' control the situation ' as they should please.
Then, with the ideas possessed by the Hili-
lites, there would not arise any very serious
objection to a union by marriage ,of Lilama
and young Pym. The Hili-lites believed
the feelings to be a guide to true happiness;
and whilst they would certainly have con-
trolled the circumstances leading up to the
seemingly unwise marriage of a girl of
sixteen — for they believed also in a proper
education of the feelings — they would not
have prevented even a seemingly unwise
marriage, provided the feelings of those con-
cerned loudly demanded such a union — I
mean that if in reason such a marriage

should seem unwise But enough. The

hour is late, and I shall not before to-morrow
evening at eight o'clock begin a description
of the exciting scenes through which the
beautiful Lilama was so soon to pass, and
the adventures of Pym and Peters — advent-
ures so terrible that for centuries to come
they will descend, a thrilling romance, from
generation to generation, in those usually
quiet and peaceful islands."

And then, against my protest, he took his
departure.

The Thirteenth Chapter

THE following morning, after leav-
ing the hotel on some trifling er-
rand, I returned to find Arthur
awaiting me. He stood by my
table, and occupied himself in turn-
ing the leaves of one of my books. He was
looking with much interest at a picture in a
work on paleontology, a book which by
some chance had accompanied a few se-
lected works that I had brought with me
from England. The picture that so inter-
ested him, I saw as I drew nearer, represent-
ed the skeleton of a prehistoric mammoth
with a man standing by its side, the latter
figure placed in the picture, no doubt, for
the purpose of showing relations of size. As
I stepped up close to Arthur's side, he turned
a page in the book and disclosed a still
more startling representation, that of a
reconstructed mammoth, wool, long coarse
hair, enormous tusks, and the rest. Ar-
173

174 -^ Strange Discovery

thur, with his usual curiosity, wanted to
be told "all about it," and I with my
usual desire to teach the searcher after
knowledge even of little things — though a
mammoth is scarcely a " little thing " —
briefly gave him some insight of the subject,
running over the differences between the
mastodontine and the elephantine mam-
moth; and then remarked to him, incident-
ally, that an American mastodon giganteus,
found not far from where we stood, over in
Missouri, a third of a century before, was
now in our British Museum, where I had
seen it. Of course Arthur had many ques-
tions to ask concerning the " gigantic-cus "
which I had actually seen. I gave him, from
memory, the best description possible, tell-
ing him that it was more than twenty feet in
length, about ten feet high, and so on. He
seemed very thoughtful for several mo-
ments, whilst I sat down to look at my morn-
ing paper. After somewhat of a pause, he
asked permission to speak — for with all Ar-
thur's lack of cultivation he was not want-
ing in a sense of propriety, which he usually
displayed in his relations with those whom
he liked. I gave the desired permission,
when he said,

" I just wanted to say, sir, that I wish't
you'd let me come up of an evenin' and sit off

A Strange Discovery 175

in the corner there on that chair, and hear
Doctor Bainbridge tell iabout Pym and Pe-
ters. I know you've been mighty good to
tell me the most. of it so far, but to-night
he'll tell how that beautiful female loves
Pym, like you said early this morning he was
goin' to; and I'm awful anxious to hear
soon. Something big's goin' to happen, and
I pity the natives if they rouse up that orang-
outang Peters. You said I would disturb
the flowin' of Doctor Bainbridge's retorick
by goin' out and in. But I won't go out. I
just won't go out; if the Boss don't like it
he can lump it — I can quit. Right down the
street I can rent a little shop-room, and a
feller and me has been talking of startin' a
ice-cream saloon for the summer — yes, I
can quit if the Boss don't like it. I work all
day, and half the night; I can't keep up my
system with a single drink without there's a
kick a-coming; and now if I can't have a lit-
tle literature when it's right in the house, it's
a pity. No: I'll not interrup' the retorick."
Well, the end of it was, I gave my consent;
and Arthur went off delighted. I mention
these facts in explanation of my position. It
has been said by one who ought to know,
and the statement has been often enough
quoted to evidence some general belief in its
truth, that consistency is a jewel. I had

176 A Strange Discovery

said, that, during Doctor Bainbridge's reci-
tations of Dirk Peters' story, Arthur should
not be present ; and now that he will be seen
in a corner of my room evening after even-
ing, I desire that the reader shall know all
the circumstances.

That afternoon I accompanied Bain-
bridge on his visit to the aged sailor. I was
pleased to see the old lusus natural sitting in
a chair, and seemingly quite strong. Bain-
bridge made himself agreeable, delivered to
Peters some small gifts of edibles, and then
proceeded to ask a number of questions — I
presume, from their nature, concerning
minutice relating to the adventures under
consideration. Then we returned to town,
and separated.

Promptly at eight o'clock Bainbridge en-
tered, and, as he took his customary seat,
cast a glance at Arthur, who sat on a chair
in the corner of the room.

" Well," began Bainbridge, after a mo-
ment's thought, " we were remarking that
within our own knowledge and experience,
true love has been exceedingly likely to
meet with obstructions to its complete frui-
tion; and Lilama and Pym met with a simi-
lar experience in far-away Hili-li. Peters
took a great interest in Pym's love aflFair; in
fact, he had grown almost to worship the

A Strange Discovery 177

young fellow whose life he had many times
preserved, and who in less than a year had,
under his eye, grown from a careless boy to
a thoughtful man. Pym returned the liking
of his old companion and benefactor; but
Peters' sentiment was one of infatuation,
such as only those persons who are ' close to
nature ' seem capable of feeling in its fullest
development. When the feeling of which
I speak exists in its most intense form, it in-
cludes a devotion equal to that of the dog
for its master: it is wholly instinctive, and
not even the certainty that death stalks in
the path between can keep it from its object.
" One morning early, there was excite-
ment in the ducal palace. Lilama was miss-
ing. Search was diligently made. Pym was
wild with excitement; and as the morning
wore on Peters grew almost mad. (I shall
speak of morning, afternoon, evening, and
night. The degree of light in Hili-li did not
now vary in the twenty-four hours ; but it is
necessary that I should in some manner di-
vide the day, and our usual method seems
the best.) The Duke himself arrived at
about ten o'clock, by which time the search
had ceased, and what to do next had become
the question. The Duke appeared surprised
at something, and spoke a few words to his
son, a young man of twenty-two or twenty-

178 A Strange Discovery

three, by name Diregus, who thereupon
looked slightly foolish, as one does who has
made some puerile mistake. The Duke ap-
peared to feel a real touch of pity for Pym,
who sat dejected, a picture of intense an-
guish, now and then casting a beseeching
look at the Duke — ^the only person who, to
his mind, might be able to assist him to re-
gain his sweetheart. The Duke again spoke
to his son, who, turning to Pym, motioned
him to accompany them. Then, followed
by Peters, they walked down to the shore,
and entered a boat.

" From the moment of starting, every
movement of the Hili-lites seemed as if
prearranged. It was a peculiarity of this
people that a number of them acting to-
gether talked very little, each of the party
appearing to know the wishes and intentions
of the others, without a word spoken. And
so was it on this occasion. Scarcely a word
was uttered, and each seemed to compre-
hend the wishes of the others, mainly by
glances and by semi-involuntary movements.
In the present instance, father and son did
not once glance at each other, yet the son
was evidently aware of each wish of the
father. They finally came to a landing,
across the bay, in the suburbs of the city
most distant from the locality in which stood

A Strange Discovery 179

the ducal palace. There, some four hundred
feet from the shore, amid giant trees, in
spacious and seemingly neglected grounds,
stood a very large residence, evidently many
centuries old, and of a style of architecture
not seen by the Americans elsewhere in Hili-
li. The building had an eerie look, and as
the party drew near to it Peters observed
that but one of its wings was inhabited, the
remainder of the mansion being in a state of
almost complete decay. They all entered by
a side doorway into the inhabited wing. Pym
and Peters were motioned to seats in the
hallway, the Duke remarking, in hushed
tones, ' The home of Masusselili,' as he and
Diregus passed through a broken and de-
caying doorway into apartments beyond.
Soon Diregus returned, and, escorting
Pym and Peters through several disordered
rooms, finally paused before a large cur-
tained doorway. Then Diregus spoke, but
in a hushed voice, and with an awed so-
lemnity that chilled his hearers through
and through.

" ' Fear not,' he said; ' no harm will be-
fall you. If the benign Fate is to smile —
well; if the Furies are to rage, we can but
bow to the Will that has held in its hand
for countless cycles this petty planet — a
grain in the wastes of Eternity. Come ! *

i8o A Strange Discovery

" He passed through the doorway, and
the two followed him. The room they
entered was spacious — almost thirty feet
square. It was crowded with strange de-
vices, and was lighted by six colored swing-
ing globes. A strange odor filled the at-
mosphere of the apartment. The room was
brilliantly enough illuminated, though the
light was variously colored and its shades
and blendings were confusing; whilst the
strange, intoxicating perfume also helped
to perplex the senses. If the apartment had
contained not more than several objects,
the visitors might soon have detected and
observed all of them; but, as it was, Pym and
Peters stood gazing confusedly about them,
momentarily beholding fresh objects, all of
them strange, many of them bizarre, some
of them frightful. It was apparently at the
same instant of time that the sight of Pym
and Peters fell upon an object so awesome
that their hearts almost ceased to beat, and
then bounded on with throbs that sent the
cold blood leaping down their spines and to
their scalps in chilling waves that ceased only
when their terror reached the numbing
stage. There before them, not six feet
away, among great cubes of crystal, and vast
retorts, and enormous vase-like objects on
the floor, stood an aged man. How aged?

A Strange Discovery 181

He was old when the antarctic barbarians
were slain, and their remnant sent back
to its home on those dreary islands to live
forever in blackness. None knew how old
he was — they, the rulers, knew not; or if
they did, on that subject they were silent.
Some said that on the ship which brought
the nucleus of their race from Rome,
came Masuscelili with the others — an aged
man, the oldest on the vessel. There he
stood before the visitors, his white beard
trailing on the tiling at his feet, his shrunken
form erect. But, whence the terror? Three
times ere I could learn this fact (and even
then I learned it more by inference than by
words) did Peters sink into delirium, mut-
tering, ' Oh, those eyes — the eyes of a god —
of a god of gods.' The aged man seated
himself at a small Roman table, and, turning
to the Duke without a question, said in a
voice unlike any other voice in all the world
— steady, but thin, high-pitched, sharp,
penetrating and agitating depths within the
hearer never reached before,

" ' You come for knowledge of The Lily.
Behold!'

" He pointed to a cube of crystal near
him, which, Peters will swear, was a moment
earlier perfectly transparent. But now it
looked as if filled with milk of purest white-

i82 A Strange Discovery

ness. As they gazed at it, a fire appeared in
the centre; and soon around the fire there
sprang into being a circular range of moun-
tains, and on the side of one of these — the
nearest — stood two persons.

" ' Lilama — Ahpilus,' screamed Diregus;
' he has stolen her away ! '

" Yes : for though Pym and Peters had
never seen the exiled lover, they recognized
X-ilama; and even they could surmise the
rest.

" ' The youth is mad,' said the Duke.
' We must rescue our darling from the
maniac'

" Pym, in his impatience, was about to
rush from the room; but the old man beck-
oned for him to approach. He did as de-
sired. Then the aged man placed a hand
upon Pym's head, and drew it down to him ;
and the man who had lived thousands of
years whispered some words into the ear of
the youth who had lived not yet four lus-
trums. As Peters described for me in his
homely way the change that came over the
face of Pym as 'that human millenarian
spoke perhaps one hundred words into the
young man's ear, I was reminded of reading
as a boy, some years ago, a description of
the burning somewhere in South America
of a great cathedral. The fire occurred dur-

A Strange Discovery 183

ing a morning service, and with the alarm
the doorways of the building were at once
obstructed by a mass of struggling hu-
manity. Some two or three thousand per-
sons were consumed in this terrible holo-
caust. The correspondent who wrote the
description of the fire of which I speak said
that for ten minutes he stood outside the ca-
thedral after the surrounding heat had be-
come so intense that efforts at rescue ceased,
and from a raised spot he looked through the
windows from which the glass had crumbled
— looked across the great window-sills raised
eight feet from the cathedral floor, looked
into the faces of the doomed. And as he
gazed, he saw the faces of many maidens
with their lovers by their side — (it was a
gala day, and all were in their best attire).
As he looked, within a brief ten minutes he
saw horror-stricken eyes gaze at the ap-
proaching fire, and at other victims sixty
feet away already burning; then quickly
would the fire approach the owner of those
eyes, reach him, consume him: And in
those fleeting moments the face of a young
girl would pass through every stage from
youth to extreme age, and then sink down in
death. As the aged mystic whispered to
Pym, the young man's face turned ghastly,
then worked convulsively, then settled into

184 A Strange Discovery

firm resolve. And Peters never again saw
on the face of the youth whom he loved with
the love of a mother and of a father in one —
never again saw the old, careless, boyish
smile. Did the old man — shall we call him
a man? — did the old man whisper into Pym's
ear the secret of eternity? Would stich a
revelation have changed youth to manhood
in a hundred seconds?

" As Pym was led by Diregus from the
room, Peters started to follow; but the aged
mystic motioned for him, too, to approach.
Peters says that after what he had just seen
he felt much more like taking to flight than
he did like obeying the summons; but he
obeyed it. The old man pointed to one of
the smaller crystal cubes, which would have
measured some five feet across. As Peters
gazed upon it, it began to take on the milky
hue which he had before witnessed. Peters
says that at first he thought these cubes
were of solid crystal, but after he witnessed
the strange alterations of which they were
capable, he believed they were hollow. He
continued to gaze as directed, and soon he
saw, sitting at a table, with a lighted candle
by her side, knitting, his poor old mother,
from whose side he had, fifteen years before,
when a thoughtless, wicked boy, ran away
to sea. He had never seen her again — he

A Strange Discovery 185

has not seen her again to the present day.
As he gazed upon that aged, wrinkled face
— that hard, Indian face (his mother was a
civihzed Indian), he saw that look which
man sees nowhere else on sea or land save
only in a mother's face. He threw himself
face-downward on the floor, and wrung in
agony his hands, and moaned out pleas for
forgiveness; but the poor, old, fragile form
knitted on, and on, and the face was never
raised. Alas ! why must we all feel the full
force of a mother's love and sacrifices only
when too late? Why must it be that the
deepest of all unselfish love goes ever unre-
warded?

" Peters scarcely knows how he got from
the room. He staggered out into the
grounds, and saw that the remainder of the
party were already seated in the boat.

" But I must hasten on. Let me say in a
few words, that the party returned to the
ducal palace, and immediately prepared to
rescue Lilama from the power of her dis-
carded lover, the exiled Ahpilus. The res-
cue party, on the advice of the Duke, was
small. He explained to Peters that so far as
mere human force was concerned, a thou-
sand men could never rescue the maiden.
Her return to them, alive and in health,
would depend upon strategy, or pos-

i86 A Strange Discovery

sibly might be accomplished as a result of
some superhuman individual effort. He
was of opinion, he remarked — and he judged
from what he had been told by government
officials lately returned from ' Crater Moun-
tains ' and also from changes in the young
man observed by himself preceding the sen-
tence of banishment — that Ahpilus was a
maniac. The Duke went on to say that he
really felt but little hope of ever again see-
ing, alive, his loved young ' cousin.' Then
he explained that, whilst there were spots
on ' Crater Mountains,' from five to eight
miles from the central crater, on the far
side of the nearer hills, hot enough to roast
a large animal, there were other spots on
the far side of the remoter mountain ranges
where, protected from crater radiation and
exposed to antarctic air-currents, the tem-
perature was almost always far below the
freezing-point, and sometimes so cold that
no animal life, even antarctic animal life,
could endure it for an hour. He said that
poor Lilama was lost, unless some other ex-
ile should save her — ^which was unlikely,
even if possible — or unless we could invent
some plan of capture so peculiar as to baf-
fle the madman — a man, by the bye, of
enormous physical strength, and with a
madman's cunning. Peters stood drinking

A Strange Discovery 187

in every word spoken by the Duke; whilst
Pym listened as if heartbroken, but in an
impatient, anxious way, indicative of a
restless impulse to be gone. The Duke
continued to instruct and advise them, un-
til a large sail-boat was provisioned and
manned, when the rescue party hastened
away on its errand of love and mercy.

" The party consisted of the young man
Diregus, Lilama's cousin; of Pym and
Peters; and of six boatmen, who might or
might not be employed directly in the attack
and rescue, as should later seem best. The
party had no weapons other than a few pe-
culiarly-shaped clubs, similar to those men-
tioned by me in describing the fight of the
early Hili-lites against the invading bar-
barians, and a long dirk-knife in the posses-
sion of Peters.

" By glancing at this map of Hili-liland,
you will observe that the sea-course to ' Cra-
ter Mountains ' was almost direct, it lying
in a straight line out of Hili-li Bay and
across the open sea for thirty miles. They
were to enter ' Volcano Bay,' which pursued
a tortuous course amid the mountains, until
they should reach a certain pass between two
of the highest mountains in the whole range.
In the centre of one of these mountains was
a peak some eight miles high, named by the

i88 A Strange Discovery

founders of Hili-li ' Mount Olympus.' It
was possible to sail (or to push their boat) to
within seven miles of a point where the lava-
bed was still red hot — about thirteen miles
from the edge of the central, white-hot, boil-
ing lava. This, however, they did not do;
first, because the pass mentioned, which was
the best course up into the mountains, be-
gan about three or four miles short of the
inner extremity of Volcano Bay; and sec-
ond, because within a mile or two of that ex-
tremity the water of the bay sometimes act-
ually boiled, and the heat would there be
quite unendurable."

Here Bainbridge paused for a moment,
and then continued,

" Well, my attentive friend, ' the witching
hour ' approaches. We lost too much time in
discussion this evening — ^What! only ten
o'clock? " he said, looking at his watch.
" Well, I am at a good resting-place in the
story, anyway, as you will to-morrow
evening admit. Why, if I started you up
into those mountains to-night, we should
get no sleep before daylight. No, no:
' sufificient unto the day is the evil thereof;
more I would ' — how does it go? Well,
it means that the evils of two days should
not be crowded into one day. The at-
tempted quotation — as generally happens

A Strange Discovery 189

when I attempt quotation from the Bible —
is a double failure: not a success simply in
accuracy of repetition; and, at best, not ap-
propriate. For I have more, and a great
deal more. But " — rising from his chair —
" I must depart. So adieu until the morrow
— and good-night to you."

He had not been gone five minutes,
and I was just complimenting Arthur on
his silence and otherwise commendable
behavior, vi^hen Doctor Castleton bounced
into the room. He knew in a general way
the drift of Peters' story, up to the develop-
ments of the evening before. His curiosity
to hear what Doctor Bainbridge had so pa-
tiently and laboriously gleaned from Peters
did not seem intense, or it was wonder-
fully well suppressed. Still, he liked briefly
to learn from me the outlines of the story,
and had not failed to meet me at some period
of each day, and t.o hint at a desire for in-
formation. Therefore, I knew with what
object he had this evening come to see me,
and I ran rapidly over the facts developed
the preceding evening, and then over those
of that evening.

" Yes, yes," he said, " I see, I see. Rich
people, but money no good; poor people,
but poverty no hardship. That's Bain-
bridge's nonsense — he never got anything

igo A Strange Discovery

out of Peters along that line. Money, but
money no value! Oh, well; Bainbridge is
young and full of theories. The next thing
he'll be saying that they've found a way in
Hili-li to make life as valuable and agreeable
for the lazy and the vile as for the industrious
and moral classes. He's just philosophiz-
ing to suit himself. Why, a people would
have money if they had to make it out of their
own hides, and the money would have value,
too — yes, and labor-purchasing value. No
people will ever have all they want, for they
will invent new wants forever, and more rap-
idly than the old wants can be gratified.
They may get all they require of food and
clothing, and that, too, in exchange for
next to no work; but they will always want
things that they are unable to procure.
So long as people do diflferent kinds of work
— supply the community with different ne-
cessaries — they will trade; and when they
trade, common-sense will soon invent a cir-
culating medium. And so long as one man
is the mental or the physical superior of an-
other, and fills more of the demands of the
community than another, he will have the
means of gratifying more of his own wants
than the other man; and as differences in-
crease, and different temperaments develop
their varying propensities — some anticipat-

A Strange Discovery 191

ing their ability to expend, others desiring
to accumulate for the everlasting rainy day
— there will, and necessarily must, arise
stable methods of preserving values. Oh,
pshaw! Who wants to make all men —
and all women, too — in a single mental
and physical mould? — and a mighty
insignificant mould at that? The world
is not made better by ease and plenty,
but by hardship. Ease and plenty come not
but as a reward of striving. When every
man is like every other man, and all are too
lazy to want anything, the reign of money
will be ended.

" Why not enroll the whole world, and
have a great army in civil life, constantly
under command, with the nature of its wants
and their form of gratification fixed or reg-
ulated by — ^well, by a majority of these
dough men? That's the only way I know
for the people to get rid of a circulating me-
dium, and live."

He paused for a moment, both in his locu-
tion, and in his walk back and forward across
the floor. Then he resumed both :

" I do not know of anything quite so idi-
otic as is this howl directed against the pos-
session of wealth. I myself am a poor man :
if I do not earn a living each year, I go hun-
gry or go in debt. But I would not trade

192 A Strange Discovery

off my chances of a competency and of
wealth — a reasonable ambition for every
man in England and America — no, not to
see every rich man on earth starve — or even
sent to hell. This howl is the mark of a
plebeian, or at least of a wickedly childish
cast of intellect. I know of nothing quite so
foolish, and of nothing half so brutal. The
Jew-baiting folly is a phase of the same non-
sense. It is foolish, because if the possession
of capital is denied to the men who can best
acquire and hence best continue to employ
it, then commercial civilization must take a
back seat — in fact, go, and go to stay; and
this means abject poverty for everybody
but a handful of state and church aristo-
crats. It is brutal, because it is unreasoning
and mistakenly vindictive. It is the howl
of the mentally weak — of the mob; and the
mob is always brutal.

" If we are to suppress those whose pos-
sessions evidence a past or a present per-
formance of some service that the world
demanded and paid for, we cast aside the
useful of the earth: we know that their
possessions were gained, not from the pau-
per, but from those who held material
wealth; and I know, and can most solemnly
swear, from personal experience, that in
this world nobody gets anything for noth-
ing.

A Strange Discovery 193

" Oh, the first French revolution ! The
French revolution was all right. The fight
was not against commercial wealth, but
against a corrupt church, state, and social
order. And nobody maintains that the
commercial class is immaculate : every class
should come under the regulation of good
statutory law. I only claim that it would be
wrong and foolish to take away in whole or
in part the accumulations of the commercial
class. With us the only wealthy citizens are
commercial people, and those who have ac-
quired wealth through them, for with us
here, at this time, the wealthy owners of
realty are commercial men who have put
their surplus money into land. Oh, yes:
control them ; but it's not the business men
of the world who need the most looking
after."

And with that he shot out of the room and
down the stairs; and I soon after retired to
rest.

The Fourteenth Chapter

THE next evening at an early hour
Arthur was seated in the least con-
spicuous corner of my room, a spot
which he seemed to have selected
as his own; and,, as usual, Doctor
Bainbridge entered promptly at eight
o'clock. After the customary minute or two
of thoughtful quiet, and a glance at the map
of Hili-li, which each evening I kept spread
on my table in the centre of the room, Bain-
bridge continued his recital :

" Last evening brought us to the mo-
ment when the rescue party, having entered
Volcano Bay, were about to land at the foot
of the great mountain, called Olympus — the
Hili-li synonym for Mount preceding the
name Olympus when the peak, some eight
miles high, was referred to. Now if you
will examine this map with a little care you
will observe here, near the inner extremity
of Volcano Bay, an apparently narrow inlet

194

A Strange Discovery 195

passing directly into the mountain-side.
This does not represent an inlet from the
bay, but an outlet from Crater Lake, a very
deep lake, the surface of which is several
thousand feet below its banks, the lake being
on the top of the mountain, just south of Mt.
Olympus, and emptying into Volcano Bay.
This outlet is a small stream at the bottom
of a chasm which cannot correctly be rep-
resented on my map, as it is relatively very
narrow, being only from ten to one hun-
dred feet in width. This chasm is what we
here term a canyon, or canon, the walls of
which in this instance rise perpendicularly
from the water to the average height of ten
thousand feet. The paths up the mountain
are on the sides of this outlet — not close to
the water, but winding in and out along
the mountain-side above, there being a
passable way on each side of the canyon
from the bay to the lake, the distance from
bay to lake along either path being, in its
tortuous course, about thirteen miles. At
Crater Lake the mountain rises to a height
of about six miles, the surface of the lake
being about four miles above the sea level,
its banks some ten thousand feet in height.
A perfectly straight line down the moun-
tain-side would measure about eight or
nine miles.

196 A Strange Discovery

" As the canyon leaves the bay, its walls
are about a hundred feet high, and are sep-
arated by about the same distance; but as
the mountain is ascended, the walls rapidly
rise, and soon become far above the water
between, and they gradually approach each
other. At certain points the walls actually
overhang the stream below, and almost
meet, at one spot approximating to within
ten feet of each other. Three miles from the
bay the walls are twenty feet apart, and for
the remaining five miles they do not at any
place approach closer, but on the other hand
very gradually separate to about sixty feet
at the extreme top. At five miles from the
bay the walls are fully ten thousand. feet in
altitude, and are nowhere less in height
from that point to the edge of Crater Lake.

" Our party started up the mountain on
one side of this canyon, or giant chasm,
Diregus appearing in some way to know
that this was the proper course to pursue.
When they were some three miles on their
way, a young man was seen approaching,
but on the opposite side of the chasm. He
was a young fellow of prepossessing appear-
ance, dressed in plain, coarse clothing, and
having the elastic movement and grace of the
better classes. Peters observed, when only
the width of the chasm separated the two.

A Strange Discovery 197

that the young Hili-lite had a laughing eye,
full of latent mischief, but also of intelli-
gence.

" He was known to Diregus, and the two
began a conversation. He was one of the
exiles, by name Medosus. Diregus soon
ascertained that the exiles had long known
Ahpilus to be insane; that, three days be-
fore, his condition had become much ag-
gravated, and that on the preceding day
he had suffered from an attack of raving
mania which lasted several hours. Medosus
did not know of the abduction of Lilama,
but he had three hours earlier seen Ahpilus
a mile or two from Crater Lake.

" When the party heard this, they were
anxious to proceed, but Medosus in turn
had a few questions to ask, and in common
courtesy Diregus was compelled to wait and
reply to the poor exile's interrogatories.

" Whilst the two conversed, Medosus
took from his pocket some dry, brown,
crumpled leaves, and put a wad of them into
his mouth, much as would an American
planter who raises tobacco and chews the
unprepared leaf. Now Peters was a lover of
tobacco, and the sight of this action, so sug-
gestive of his loved weed, excited him great-
ly, as he had not so much as seen a scrap of
tobacco for months. When it developed that

198 A Straitge Discovery

it was tobacco that Medosus had placed in
his mouth, and that in some of the valleys
between these mountains a species of wild
tobacco grew, Peters was determined to
have some of it, the craving of months seem-
ing so near to gratification; and he asked
Medosus to give him a little of it, to last until
he could procure a fuller supply. Medosus
was perfectly willing to grant this request;
but on rolling up a wad and attempting to
throw it across the chasm, it fell into the
abyss and fluttered downward to the water
nearly two miles below. He was about to
make a second efifort, when Peters stopped
him, and then a pretty, though a really terri-
ble thing happened — to relate which was the
real purpose of this digression from my
story proper.

" Peters was at the moment standing
some fifteen feet from the edge of the chasm,
the chasm being at this point about twenty
feet in width — twenty feet in width, and
even here, where it was two thousand feet
less in depth than it was a mile higher up, at
least eight thousand feet in descent — sheer
to the raging torrent and the huge, jagged
lava-bowlders below. It was all done so
quickly that none of the party had time to
become alarmed. Peters, whose arms when
he hung them reached to within four inches

A Strange Discovery 199

of his feet, stooped just enough to bring his
hands to the ground. Then, as a lame man
using crutches might swing himself along,
but with lightning-Hke swiftness, Peters
took two rapid jumps toward the edge of
the chasm, the second jump landing him di-
rectly on its edge. Then he shot up and
out into the air over that awful abyss, and
landed on the opposite side as gently as a
cat lands from a six-foot leap; and it did not
seem to require of him an unusual efifort.
He received his tobacco, and turned to make
the leap back.

" When Peters mentioned to me the cir-
cumstance of this leap, it was only because
he had at the time it was made been so in-
terested in the incident of getting the to-
bacco, that he never forgot the occurrence;
in fact, it seems to have impressed his mind
and memory almost as deeply as did the
old man with the ' snow-drift beard and the
eyes of a god.'

" I attempted to get out of Peters just
how he made the leap — ^whether with the
legs, or the arms, or both as an impelling
force; but it was no use. I believe that he
does not himself know — he did it by an ani-
mal instinct, and that is all there is to be
said. The old fellow does not really know
his age, but I should place it, at the present

200 A strange Discovery

time, at from seventy-eight to eighty years,
which, if correct, would indicate that he was
twenty-eight or thirty at the time he was in
Hili-li. He must have been as strong gen-
erally as three average men, and in the
arms as strong as five or six such men.
You remember telling me yourself how he
twisted that iron poker, and broke the oak
pole; and that was the act of an invalid
nearly eighty years of age. Oh, he must
have been a Samson at twenty-eight, and
as agile as a tiger. What I could draw out
of him concerning the leap, reminded me of
descriptions I have read of the Simiidcr —
particularly of the Borneo orang-outang.

" But to return : The party separated from
Medosus, who, when about two hundred
feet away, shouted back, * You'd better stay
with us, Diregus. We do not here have to

hide away when we play or at '

(mentioning the names of two very rough
games prohibited by law on all the islands of
the Hili-li Kingdom — games corresponding
to our foot-ball and our wrestling). The
party continued up the mountain-side, rest-
ing as they felt the need of rest. No prepara-
tion for the darkness of night was necessary;
for here the crater-light was very bright — ^in
some unshaded spots it was even painfully
brilliant.

A Strange Discovery 201

" After several hours of laborious ascent,
the small party of four (Diregus had taken
with them only one of the boatmen) came
within plain sight of the rim of Crater Lake,
half a mile ahead of them, and almost per-
pendicularly above, though nearly two miles
away measured along the shortest route
that travellers might pursue. It was not at
the time known, and therefore never will be
known, whether or not Lilama had caught
a glimpse of her approaching friends; but
at that moment a piercing scream rang
through the air from above. Peters thinks
that Lilama saw some of the party, because
the quality of the scream was not such as to
convey an impression that she was in instant
danger. The signal, if signal it was, was not
repeated, nor did the party wait for a repe-
tition. They all hurried onward with re-
newed vigor; and, in a short time, consider-
ing the severity of the ascent, had reached
a point near which they supposed the
scream must have been uttered.

" The party had scattered, and were
searching among the mammoth lava-bowld-
ers, and in the small side valleys and fissures;
Peters, however, as he then always instinc-
tively did, keeping by the side of Pym. The
two had separated to quite a distance from
the others, when, being then quite close to

202 A Strange Discovery

the edge of the great chasm, they heard a
deep though penetrating voice say the one
word (of course in the Hili-H language),
' Well? '

" Looking in the direction from which the
voice came, they saw on the opposite side of
the chasm a young and handsome man,
dressed much as was the exile, Medosus.
There could not for a moment be any doubt
in the minds of Pym and Peters concerning
the identity of this young man; but if there
had been, it would immediately have been
dispelled.

" ' Well, gentlemen? ' the voice further
said.

" Pym and Peters had stepped up close
to the edge of the abyss, which here was, as
it was throughout the upper third of its
length, from forty-five to fifty-five feet in
width (Peters thinks that at this part of its
course it was fully fifty feet broad).

" ' Well, gentlemen: why are you two,
strangers to me, and to my people, also, I
think — why are you here? '

" The speaker would have seemed very far
from insane, had it not been for his large
black eyes, shifting and glittering in the
bright volcanic light.

" At last Pym spoke :

" ' Sir,' he said, very calmly, ' we came to

A Strange Discovery 203

assist our friends of the neighboring island
— friends who have been very kind to us= — to
search for a maiden who by some strange
mischance has been lost from her people —
from her people and her friends, who grieve
sorely over their loss.'

" ' Ah, ha,' said Ahpilus — for it was he —
' very good. And they grieve, do they?
Curse them, let them grieve ! And a certain
lover — and curse him, too — does he grieve?
He would better! Ah, ha, ha, ha ' — the
voice rising with each syllable, until the
last was almost shrieked at Pym — ' Kind to
you, were they? Well, there is one of them
near by — on this side the chasm, curse you
— who won't be kind to you again. Yes,
and you may see her, too.' Then Ahpilus
stepped ofif behind some thick, stunted
bushes of a variety of evergreen, whence, in
a moment, he returned, leading by the wrist
Lilama. ' Great Jove above ! Girl, do you
see your lover over there? You have no
love for me — you never had; but never
again in time or in eternity shall I lie with
burning brain, thinking of those snowy
arms about the stranger's neck — aye, as
once I saw them in the palace grounds.
Curse you all, and may you all alike be

d d. Why should a stranger come

through ten thousand perils to add to all my

204 A Strange Discovery

untold agonies.' Here for a moment his
voice softened, almost to a gentle whisper.
' Ah, Lilama, once, only once, you shall, of
your own free will, clasp those arms around
me — if not in love, then in terror. A mo-
ment more, and over this abyss together we
shall go ! ' With terror in his eyes, Pym
glanced at Peters; and even the phlegmatic
Peters was startled. ' Yes, for one moment
in each other's arms; and then for me, the
everlasting darkness of Tartarus, or of end-
less oblivion.'

" As he talked, he had dropped the wrist
of Lilama, and she crouched upon the
ground with her hands before her face, whilst
Ahpilus continued to rave, and to pace from
the chasm's edge away and back again, in
maniac strides, until he had almost beaten
where he paced a pathway. There was not
the slightest necessity for Ahpilus to guard
Lilama, for the awful chasm was more than
twice the width that any sane and normal
man, even an athlete, would dare attempt to
leap, even to preserve his own life; and the
distance to be traversed to gain a point in
the chasm so narrow that an ordinary man
would dare attempt to leap it, was several
miles down the mountain-side; so that
Lilama was at least ten miles beyond the
reach of Pym, though less than eighty feet
away.

A Strange Discovery 205

" The mental strain on poor Pym was al-
most enough to make him a madman.
There strode the maniac, to and from the
edge of the abyss, rhythmically, rarely vary-
ing the distance by a yard — twenty yards oflf,
then back again, then away. On every third
or fourth approach he stepped literally to
the edge of the chasm, and glanced down,
ten thousand feet to where the stream below
looked like the finest silver thread, Hghted
by the dazzling light from the giant crater,
reflected into every smallest fissure. Now
and again the madman would lash himself
into a fury, and stop for a moment to gaze at
Lilama, who never moved from her crouch-
ing position some ten feet from the canyon's
brink. Even Peters, the stoic, was moved
— but moved to anger rather than to grief or
fear. He inwardly chafed, and madly raved,
by turns, at the impotency of his position;
whilst Pym seemed frozen into statuesque
despair. How much longer would this scene
of terror last ? Oh, the thought of that awful
leap into space ! The maniac might any mo-
ment end the scene — each time as he ap-
proached in that wild rush backward and
forward might be the last. The slightest
move, the slightest sound, might precipi-
tate the dire calamity — and Lilama as well
as Pym and Peters seemed to feel this truth.

2o6 A Strange Discovery

The madman, like the wild beast, appears to
need an extraneous stimulus, be it ever so
slight, to suggest an initiative: the crook-
ing of a finger, the whispering of a word,
may be sufficient, but it must be something.
— Ah! Has the moment come? Has the
insane man caught some sound inaudible to
the others? He pauses. Yes, he is going
to act.

" ' Oh! friend,' wailed Pym to Peters, in
a low voice, ' save her, save her, or where she
goes, there go I.'

" Then Peters looks across the chasm,
down upon the scene beyond. The opposite
brink at this point is ten or twelve feet lower
than the spot where Pym and Peters stand,
which gives them an excellent view of
Lilama and Ahpilus. It is impossible to say
just why, but it is obvious that the time
which they dread has come. Ahpilus stands
looking at the beautiful maiden who
crouches in front of him; and as he gazes his
powerful form seems to swell, as does that of
a wild animal that has determined to spring
upon its prey. His arms move forward to
grasp her. He has no fear of interruption —
he has for the moment forgotten the strang-
ers. He slightly alters his position — ^hisback
is toward the chasm- — ^his hands touch the
person of his prey. Lilama partly raises her

A Strange Discovery 207

head. She glances past the maniac for a last
look at her lover. She does not scream, even
as those vise-like hands close upon her, and
slowly, oh, so slowly, but steadily, draw her
within that iron embrace — slowly, slowly, as
might a maniac devotee move in the des-
ecration of his idol.

" But why does she not scream? Why
are her eyes fastened — not on her lover — not
on the madman, but upon another object?
What is that object? Is it a man? Can any
man move as that thing moves? Surely that
cannot be a man, that streak of drab color —
yonder thing that casts to the ground a gar-
ment, then shoots backward twenty feet
from the abyss — swifter than a panther, as
silent as death, with two balls of living fire
glaring from — from a face? Surely not a
human face ! Yes, it is a human face. She
does not see the pallid face, the wild eyes of
her lover, looking, too, at that thing — that
human embodiment of animal agility. No:
she has not time to- look, for though the hu-
man eye is quick, that thing is quicker; and
if she take her eye from it for half a second,
her gaze will lose it. She cannot take
from it her gaze — she is fascinated. Within
the past second of time an heroic resolve has
been formed, and a drama has begun; in
the next two seconds an act in the drama will

2o8 A Strange Discovery

be completed; in sixty seconds more, a
whole tragedy will be added to the list of
human sorrows.

" No tongue can tell what cannot quite
be seen. A rush of color toward that awful
gap; it reaches the edge; it rises in the air
and shoots out over that gulf that might
indeed have been the portal of Tartarus.
Fifty feet as flies the bird. It is in the air —
it is half-way over — and yet the maniac has
seen it not. But the maniac is turning with
his victim in his arms. The streak of drab
has passed forty feet — ten feet further if it
is to reach the other brink — ten thousand
if it fails to reach it; and it has already sunk
ten feet in space — ^with ten feet more of
horizontal distance to cover, it is already on
a level with the edge of the abyss which it

must safely reach, or The maniac has

turned; and the streak of drab has reached
the brink — but, ah ! below the surface. The
form is that of. Peters — the only man who
could be in such a situation yet live on. One
of those invincible arms is thrown upon the
surface above the chasm, and those long
fingers fasten upon the immovable lava.
And now the madman sees the danger that
menaces his design — but too late, for Pe-
ters the unconquerable stands erect between
him and the chasm. Then Ahpilus quickly

A Strange Discovery 209

sets on the ground his Hving burden; and
Peters, the human bird of passage, risks
again his life.

" But, for a man like Peters, such a con-
test was scarcely a risk. Had Ahpilus been
less savage in his baffled rage, Peters would
have spared the madman ; but it was not to
be. There was scarcely a man in all Hili-li
that could physically cope with Ahpilus ; but
he was no match for Peters. For a few mo-
ments the sailor protected himself without
any act of aggression; but it soon became
apparent that he would be obliged to de-
stroy his adversary, or himself be destroyed.
Ahpilus had pushed Peters, or Peters had
carelessly allowed himself to shift his own
position, to within dangerously close prox-
imity to the chasm, and at the moment when
Peters noticed this circumstance, he also
saw that he was between Ahpilus and
the abyss; and Ahpilus, in all his furious
madness, also observed his advantage. Pe-
ters had in his possession a very long and
keen knife, but, as he afterward said in talk-
ing over this incident, he had never yet seen
the time when he was compelled to use an
artificial weapon in an encounter with a
single combatant; and particularly would
he never have used a knife, even though
his adversary were a maniac, if a maniac

210 A Strange T> IS COY "E^Y

without an artificial weapon. Peters saw
that Diregus had found Pym, and, as was
also the boatman, he and Pym were, of
course, viewing the struggle. I should
not, however, have included Pym in the
party of observers; for he knew too well
how the combat would end to be much ab-
sorbed in it. He had no eyes for anything
but Lilama. — But to return: As Ahpilus
saw his advantage, by a supreme effort he
summoned all his great muscular strength,
and aided by that invincible motor, the
will of a madman, he endeavored to force
Peters over the brink. At that precise
moment the sailor had his right hand closed
on the top of Ahpilus's left shoulder, and his
left hand just beneath Ahpilus's right arm
on the side of the exile's chest. He quickly
shifted his left hand to the side of the hip;
and then those great gorilla arms raised from
the ground the body of the madman, swung
it overhead as another man might swing
the body of a three-year-old child, as he did
so bringing the back of his adversary down-
ward; and then came a movement of Her-
culean power in which the long arms ap-
proximated with a twisting, bending effect;
two vertebra; in Ahpilus's back at the point
of least resistance separated, the spine was
dislocated, and a mass of helpless, vibrat-

A Strange Discovery 211

ing human flesh fell at the feet of the victor.
Peters, whilst his brute instinct was in full
possession of him, might, instead of drop-
ping Ahpilus to the ground, have thrown
the body into the abyss; but Diregus had
anticipated such an action, and called to
Peters not to injure the poor insane fel-
low more than was necessary to prevent
him from injuring others. Ahpilus was
not dead — that is, he was not dead over
his entire body : the hips and all below were
as nerveless as the body of a corpse; but
above the hips, the same old vigor remained
— and so it would be though he lived for
yet a hundred years."

Here Doctor Bainbridge ceased to speak.
Doctor Castleton had entered the room two
or three minutes before, and, keeping silent,
had heard the last three or four hundred
words, which described the close of that
brief but terrible combat.

The Fifteenth Chapter

""V'^TELL," said Doctor Castle-
%/\/ ton, as Bainbridge closed.
T T ".Peters could, when he was
fifty years younger, have
done that very thing to any
living man weighing not more than a hun-
dred and eighty or a hundred and ninety
pounds. I myself have seen him throw to
the ground a powerful horse, and the little
giant must have been older than sixty at the
time. Then again, he possesses that won-
derful instinct of certainty in action which
belongs to purely animal life. It is said that
the tiger when it strikes never misses its
aim ; and that our American panther makes
the most unusual leaps without ever mak-
ing an attempt beyond its powers. I have
many times observed that even our com-
paratively degenerate domestic cat very
rarely indeed, if ever, fails to accomplish the
purpose of a stroke. Peters possesses, or did
possess, that instinct."

212

A Strange Discovery 213

" Yes," said Bainbridge, " you are right.
Peters says that on almost every vessel he
ever shipped on he was called ' the baboon '
— because of his great physical power and
agility, he says; but as we know, rather be-
cause of his extremely short stature, his
large mouth — in fact, his resemblance in
many striking ways to the gorilla, or the
orang-outang; and perhaps, also, in part, to
his habit, mentioned in Pym's description of
him, of feigning mental aberration — assum-
ing to be' simple.' "

" This won't do," said Castleton, with
that peculiar look on his face which always
appeared when he was about to deflect from
the serious to the humorous. " Whilst I
should not object to hearing my old friend
Peters called a gorilla, I draw the line at
gorilla. I should object to the appellation
orang-outang, and I should resent with em-
phasis that of baboon. But gorilla I will ac-
cept, for in many ways the gorilla is, or at
least once was, the superior of man. Even
if we limit the source of our deductions to
the skeleton of the animal, the truth of my
last assertion is strongly evidenced. In the
first place, the gorilla is more sedate and less
pettily curious than man; this is proved by
his having only three, instead of four, bones
in the last division of his spine, giving him a

214 ^ strange Discovery

shorter caudal appendage than man's, and
proving the animal to be farther from the
monkey than are we; then in the second
place, the gorilla has thirteen ribs, which
would seem to be rational evidence that,
whatever the present gorilla may be, his an-
cestors of by-gone ages were handsomer
than man; because in the gorilla's first
search for a wife the field of operations was
not limited to his own chest."

" That will do very well, doctor; but
don't you think you are a little severe on
Adam? " I said.

" I have no sympathies witK Adam. Not
that I ever blamed him for his weakness in
the apple incident; but I do blame him for
his garrulity, and his paltry cowardice in ex-
posing Eve. Eve was an instinctive agnos-
tic — and she didn't purpose to be anybody's
slave. If Adam decided to keep up with the
procession, as he at first did decide to do, he
had no business to whine over the outcome.
I'd wager freely that Eve earned the living
after the pair left paradise. Cain took after
his mother; and I hazard the opinion that
Eve was in sympathy with Cain in the Abel
episode — that is, aftei- the tragedy. Eve
and Cain had the best of everything all the
way through, for they acted in harmony
with their feelings; whilst poor old feeble.

A Strange Discovery 215

vacillating Adam tried to use his worthless
old brain-box, and the natural consequence
ensued. His feelings, which constituted the
strongest part of his mind, were always in
conflict with his intellect, which was just
strong enough to get him into trouble when
a pure out-and-out unreasoning animal
would have been safe; and he never had
enough will properly to correct an error
when he did see it."

We laughed over this conceit of Castle-
ton's, and Bainbridge said :

" Speaking of biblical characters, I have
thought that Moses would, with even slight
literary training, have far surpassed the
modern writer of adventure-fiction. His
style may be open to adverse criticism,
but his originality is beyond question. If
he left any material for a purely original
story, I fail to detect it. He gave to lit-
' erature the sea-story, the war-story, and
the love-story^stories that hinge on all the
human passions, and stories of the super-
natural in all its phases. He first pre-
sented to a world innocent of fiction-litera-
ture the giant and the dwarf; the brave
man, the strong man, and the man of su-
preme fortitude; the honest man, the truth-
ful king, and the woman that knows how to
wait for the man she loves; voices in the air,

2 16 A Strange Discovery

signs in the sky — in short, everything.
Even poor old ^sop vi^asn't in time to grasp .
a reputation for originality. The modern
story-teller may combine, extend, and elab-
orate; but all opportunity for a display of
invention seems to be forever barred."

" By the bye, doctor," said Castleton, evi-
dently impatient at his enforced silence
whilst another spoke, " do any of your vol-
canoes or mountains in Hili-li blow up? "

" No, sir," answered Bainbridge, with
dignity.

" Well, if I had been Pym I should have
blown those mountains into the Antarctic
Ocean," said Castleton. " I understand
from the words that I caught this evening
as I entered here that your heroine is safe;
but if I had been Pym, I should have taken
no risks. I should have sent your madman
word to return the girl, or take the conse-
quences — the consequences being that I
should have blown him and the entire moun-
tain into the mighty deep. ' Sir,' I should
have said, ' return the lady, or I will anni-
hilate you.' And so I should have done, if a
hair of her head had been harmed. — By the
bye, gentlemen, I believe you never heard of
my invention for stopping war, did you? "

We intimated that we had thus far been
deprived of that pleasure. I saw that one

A Strange Discovery 217

of his peculiar outbursts was at hand — one
of those apparently serious, though, I
thought, intentionally humorous sallies, so
puzzling coming from a man of Castleton's
intellectual attainments, and the mental
primiim mobile of which I had already been
much interested in trying to determine.

" Well, gentlemen," he continued, " it
was about fourteen years ago, during the
dark days of The War " — he referred to the
great rebellion in the United States, which
began in 1861, and which it required the ex-
isting government about four years to sup-
press. " It was during the period when our
great President was most worried. I had
thought the matter over — as I always do
think over vast questions, from the stand-
point of true greatness. ' Why not,' I men-
tally soliloquized, ' why not end this matter
at a blow? ' As I drove about through our
retired roads and laYies, I gave the subject
my very best attention. I thought to my-
self how the present system of the universe
depends upon what we term the luminiferous
ether; of the perfect elasticity and inex-
pansibility of that ether; of what its nature
must be. I concluded that no ultimate par-
ticle of it — as with matter no atom — is ever
added to or removed from the universe.
Now, if we could succeed in removing from

2i8 A Strange Discovery

this inexpansible, universal ocean of ether
even the most ultimate portion, there would
be a literal vacuum with nothing to fill it,
and the equilibrium of the universe would
be destroyed. Now, gentlemen, is or is not
this supposition logical? "

We admitted our inability to deny its
truth.

" ' Well, then,' I reasoned, looking at the
subject on the reverse side, ' could an addi-
tional portion of ether be created, there
would be in space no place to receive it; the
universe in its present state — a state in
which what we term matter or substance ex-
ists — would just simply cease to exist — in-
stantly, and within the compass of every star
and planet.'

" But how to create that particle of ether
— that was what occupied my mind for
weeks. I would seem to grasp the hint that
came and went within the recesses of a brain
which — so say my friends — has perhaps
never had its equal for variety of conception
and rapid response to the slightest external
or internal stimulus. Now, many physicists
suppose matter to be simply a form of ether
— plainly, that matter originated out of
ether — was made from ether; so that, after
all, the universe was created from nothing
— that is, nothing if we correctly define

A Strange Discovery 219

matter. It was but a step for me, then,
to the end : remove all radiant energy from
a fixed gas — a gas without the property
of condensation to another form of mat-
ter, i.e., to a fluid or a solid — and the
thing, I said to myself, is done. I am posi-
tive that I know of such a gas, and within
a few years all physicists will recognize it.
At present the method of procuring it is my
secret, as I may still wish to experiment with
what is now but a theoretical discovery,
though certain to unfold in practice exactly
as I have explained it. You understand,
of course, that I remove from my gas, by
artificial cold and compression, the last ves-
tige of heat, my gas becomes ether, there is
no place for it in the universal ocean of inex-
pansible ether, the balance of the universe as
it now exists is destroyed, all matter in-
stantly ceases to exist, and we just sit back
and wait for a few billions of trillions of
cycles of time, until another system of
nature is formed."

For a time we all kept silence: Doctor
Bainbridge, I suppose, like myself, marvel-
ling at the peculiarities of our strange com-
panion. At last I said :

" And how about the war, doctor? "
" Now comes the humihation ! " he re-
pUed. " Oh, must genius ever grovel at the

220 A Strange Discovery

feet of mere physical power — insolent of-
ficial power ! Why are great men so difficult
of access! Why, in 1453, did not Constan-
tine in his day of trouble listen to your brainy
countryman, and save Europe from the in-
roads of the Turk? Well, I hastened to
Washington City, determined that no ear
other than the President's own should hear
the secret; and that no power on earth
should draw it from me. I went to the
White House. I admit that war-times are
busy times — but those infernal White House
flunkies kept me waiting in the reception-
rooms for four hours ! I told my plans to
the ushers, to a waiting soldier or two, and
to a foreign diplomat with whom I struck up
a talk. All of them acted suspiciously, and
I believe were jealous of my wisdom. When,
for the third time, an usher took my card —
or pretended to take my card — to the Presi-
dent, his secretary came down to me. At
first I told him that my secret was for the
President's ear alone; but at last I gave him
a clew to the nature of my business. He left
me, but he did not return. Such is reflected
political power. But I thought of my power
— aye, and physical power, too — the only
real power. I never blamed the President —

I to this day believe that that fellow H

never told Lincoln of my visit to the White
House."

A Strange Discovery 221

After an appreciative murmur and move-
ment on the part of Bainbridge and myself —
for we felt like laughing, and yet sighs of
wonderment were expected by Castleton —
and after a grunt from Arthur in his corner,
I asked, for want of something better to say,

" Were you ever in the army, doctor? "

" Well — ah — no — yes — no, sir; not ex-
actly," Castleton repHed. " But I had a
younger brother who beat the drum for a
whole week in an enlisting-office tent in Chi-
cago. Poor boy ! he died of brain fever in
1869 — always a genius — great brain. — And
this talk reminds me that I am getting no
pension from the United States Govern-
ment on that poor, neglected, sacrificed boy.
Curse my thoughtlessness ! Yes, and — but
no : I belong to the old school of patriots —
I will not curse my country."

As Castleton uttered the last sentence, he
approached the door of exit to the hall. He
had as usual been pacing the floor; and with
the closing word he shot into the hall and
was gone. And as the sound of his foot-
steps rang through the corridors of the hotel,
Arthur remarked, from his corner :

" It's a pity he didn't sit down on his
boomerang infernal-machine, and then set
it a-going : he might a been on the moon by
this time, where the fool belongs, with the

222 A Strange Discovery

other lunatics. If he ever comes into my
new ice-cream parlor — (twelve by sixteen,
gas-lights, three tables, and six chairs; two
spoons furnished with one saucer if desired,
and a napkin for your lady free; ten cents a
saucer, and ginger-bread thrown in) — why
out he goes, too quick. Oh, he's a daisy, he
is ! If you ever want to remind me of him,
anybody, ask me to lend you a dime; and
when I shake my head and my teeth rattle,
I'll remember the lunkhead, sure enough."

I frowned down the youngster, for he had
promised not to obtrude his opinion in the
presence of Bainbridge. But as his words
did not refer in any manner to the story that
Bainbridge was telling us, I should not have
objected to them, but that with Arthur it
was necessary to be cautious in creating
precedents, which, as I have intimated, in
his case almost immediately congealed into
vested rights; and our agreement had ob-
ligated him to observe complete silence on
the subject of Peters' %tory, and, if I correct-
ly remember — though Arthur denied this
latter — on all other subjects, in the presence
of Doctor Bainbridge.

As Bainbridge appeared to have nothing
further to say, and was making those slight
occasional movements which I knew pre-
saged his departure, I began to talk of Pe-

A Strange Discovery 223

ters' leap ; and in the most guarded manner
— for with Bainbridge any question of the
facts of his narrative required tact and deli-
cacy to avoid the giving of offence — to dis-
cuss the subject of leaping in general, the
facts and probabihties relating to distance,
and the laws and conditions that might gov-
ern and regulate the running-leap.

" Do you not think," I finally asked,
" that Peters somewhat overestimates the
distance of his marvellous leap? I am aware
that Peters was, both in strength and in agil-
ity, almost preterhuman; but fifty feet or
thereabouts ! That seems scarcely possible.
Our best athletes, I believe, have never, on
level ground, made a running leap of much
more than half that distance. Now forty
feet, under all the circumstances, would not
strike me as impossible, though thirty-five
would better chime with my ideas of the
probable, and thirty would remove all possi-
bility of any draft on my credulity."

" It is not a question of ideas or of cre-
dulity," answered Bainbridge, " but one of
fact. However, we will look at the incident
from the stand-point of reason and experi-
ence. Now let us assume that a running
leap of twenty-five feet on level ground
would not be beyond the ability of a trained
athlete. I think you will allow to Peters a

224 -^ Strange Discovery

natural advantage of seven feet over an or-
dinary athlete, when you consider the su-
periority of his form, so well adapted to leap-
ing — a form that gives to him the advantage
of an orang-outang, without the disadvan-
tage of hand-like feet, so poorly suited to
flat surfaces. From the fullest information
I could obtain from Peters, I believe that in
leaping he obtains more impetus from his
arms than from his legs; but even with his
preternatural strength he does not get quite
as much impulse-force from his legs as
would an ordinary athlete. I myself think
that the use of his arms in making this leap
gave him an advantage of one-third 'over an-
other man of equal strength. However, I
ask you to allow him from all advantage of
form, in the leap alone, seven feet, or twenty-
eight per cent."

To this proposition I assented.

" Then," continued Bainbridge, "it must
be remembered that so far as the actual leap
is concerned, he missed the opposite edge of
the abyss — for he did miss it, and any other
man would have gone to the bottom of the
chasm. It was only the length of his arm,
with its excessive strength, and the iron grip
of that enormous hand, which prevented
complete failure. As a matter of fact, the
v/alls of the abyss being fifty feet apart, Pe-

A Strange Discovery 225

ters leaped only forty-seven feet. Am I cor-
rect? "

Again I assented.

" Then," said Bainbridge, " we have
brought within the limits of reason thirty-
five of the fifty feet, and fifteen feet remain
to be accounted for. Now let us recall to
your memory the fact that the edge of the
abyss toward which he leaped was twelve
feet lower than the edge from which he
sprung; and that, in his progress across the
chasm he fell, in addition to this twelve feet,
his own height — ^which, according to Pym's
diary was, at that period, four feet and eight
inches. If Peters could have covered thirty-
five feet on level ground, could he have cov-
ered fifty feet with the advantage of a drop
of nearly seventeen feet? Assuming a cer-
tain weight for Peters, we could calculate
the number of foot-pounds of energy, or the
initial velocity, necessary to make a leap of
thirty-five feet on level ground, and how
many foot-pounds it would require to make
a leap of fifty feet with a drop of sixteen feet
and eight inches taken into the conditions.
But as most of the equations in our calcula-
tion are approximative, I prefer that the ele-
ment of gravitation should be handled in a
general way. If a leaper were to impel him-
self horizontally only, he would, in the short-

226 A strange Discovery

est leap, fall below a level. This fall may be
met to the extent of about two feet, by draw-
ing up the legs — that is, by ' hunkering ' as
the leap progresses, and alighting on his
feet with the body to that extent lower than
when the spring began. In a leap of twenty-
five feet, however, the leaper is compelled to
project himself upward as well as forward;
and an instinctive sense of just how little
energy may be expended in raising him-
self, and how much may be left for the for-
ward impulse, is one of the chief elements
of his proficiency. . Peters did not have to
raise his body at all."

" I begin to comprehend," said I.

" Yes," replied Bainbridge, " the more
you think of it, the more convinced will you
become that Peters made the leap as he
states. Of course he could not have sprung
fifty feet, or even forty feet, on a level; for,
in a leap of only forty feet, one would have
to raise himself more than twelve feet into
the air, and (except for a possible small ad-
vantage of position in leaping) it requires
the same amount of force to raise a body ten
feet on an incline, as it does to raise the same
body ten feet perpendicularly into space —
an impossible feat, even to Peters at twenty-
eight or thirty years of age."

" I quite believe that he did it," I said.

A Strange Discovery 227

" and when we consider that he claims to
have measured the distance only mentally,
and that he might therefore honestly have
mistaken it to the extent of a few feet, I am
willing to say that my confidence in his in-
tended veracity is unshaken — even if he is
an old sailor."

" Yes," said Bainbridge, " and we must
not overlook the fact that a man's mental
state at the time of performing a physical
feat is a very important determining factor
in the result of the performance. A powerful
but lackadaisical fellow might, with only a
few dollars at stake, make a very poor show-
ing; yet to preserve his life he might make
a really wonderful leap. What effect, then,
did mental condition exert on a man like Pe-
ters under the circumstances attending this
unparalleled leap? Think of the enormous
muscular power developed by the message
received through the nerves from a mind
thus afifected ! His own life, and that of an-
other, if not of two others, depended upon
the success of his efifort. Under such cir-
cumstances muscular power would either be
paralyzed, or else intensified beyond our
common conception of such force. Peters
positively asserts, that when a boy of sixteen
he frequently leaped from the flat upper deck
of a boat — that is, from a height of twenty

228 A strange Discovery

feet — into the surrounding water, habitually
covering a distartte of from forty to forty-
five feet; whilst other boys, under the
same conditions, rarely covered twenty-five
feet, and never thirty."

A moment later Bainbridge arose to de-
part; but he lingered for a moment, stand-
ing, and with his left hand resting on the
centre table, began to speak in a general way
of the great antarctic crater and its surround-
ing wonders. It was my habit to make full
notes of the actual facts stated by him in the
more formal parts of these evening recitals,
and sometimes even of his comments; and
I regret that I did not do so at the particular
moment to which I am now alluding. It
was not until the following morning that I
made a few memoranda of the closing inci-
dent of the evening. With the help of these
notes and a fairly good memory, I hope to
be able at this late day to describe for the
reader an episode that I should dislike en-
tirely to omit from this narrative.

He spoke for several minutes of the won-
derful power of nature to accomplish certain
ends — the force that accomplishes which,
he termed a purpose in nature; and he made
some remarks along the line of a contention,
that the development ■ of all matter into
higher forms was what he called an uncon-

A Strange Discovery 229

Scious intention, explaining that there was
no paradox in the expression " unconscious
intention " ; for, he said, even men, individ-
ual men, are constantly performing a thou-
sand acts that have an unconscious purpose
or intention — as, for instance, the automatic
action of winding a watch without the slight-
est exercise of will, and without remember-
ing the action. This unconscious motive-
force, he said, is inherent in vegetables as
well as in animals, and that in fact it exists,
though relatively of very slow and feeble
action, in all matter, the power being an at-
tribute of all molecules, and even of elemen-
tal atoms. He, however, claimed no origi-
nality for any of the views which he ex-
pressed.

" To my consciousness," he said, " the
conviction of individual immortality is so
clear that, if I were not perfectly aware of
the cause of their doubt or disbelief, I
should wonder at intelligent persons ques-
tioning the fact. Like everything else
taught by Christ, that we are immortal is a
fact; and it is not in a billion years that we
shall live again under new conditions, but,
as He intimated, ' to-morrow.' And I sur-
mise that we shall not do so in any absurdly
physical way, nor yet in a manner so deeply
abstruse that it would require a logician and

230 A Strange Discovery

a professional physicist, were it explained,
to comprehend it. As with all that God has
given us, we shall find the conditions of the
next life very simple. Educated men —
nearly all highly educated men, and particu-
larly educated theologians — ^when they
touch this subject remind me of the cuttle-
fish. There is nothing around them that is
not perfectly transparent until, by their own
act, everything is obscured to themselves
and to their neighbors. But whilst the cut-
tle-fish swims out of the zone of opacity
created by himself, the theologian remains
in his, fighting the obscurity with logic — for
that purpose the poorest of all devices. You
cannot guide an emotional boat with an in-
tellectual rudder. Something to me much
more convincing than reason, tells me that
our bodies will not be long in their graves be-
fore we shall again begin to live ; and my feel-
ing is, that, though consciousness will at the
death of this body be obscured for a time,
it will not be lost for a long time. I feel that
almost at once after death the mystery of
conscious individuality will again assert it-
self. Refined by this life, as the molecular
construction of inorganic matter is refined
by passing through organic life, so the
consciousness lately within the molecules
of j-our discarded body, will not be as

A Strange Discovery 231

the consciousness within like molecules of
mineral or of vegetable matter; for it will
be your consciousness — your consciousness,
created by God and developed by His edict
— developed after slumbering for ages with-
in the mineral; awakening to quicker ac-
tion in the vegetable world; touching the
domain of conscious memory in lower
animals; aroused to keener moral and in-
tellectual existence in your late body, and
at last made ready for a new mystery —
what, we know not — in another world, pos-
sibly in the direction of what we might call
a ' fourth dimension ' of consciousness. Oh,
no; there should not be anything to prevent
us from knowing now that we shall continue
to exist, and to go ever upward, upward, up-
ward. Nature permits us, in each sphere of
being, to catch a glimpse of the succeeding
one, if only we will not ourselves obstruct
the view."

A moment later he dropped into an ani-
mated, almost rhapsodical, running com-
ment on some of the scenic beauties sur-
rounding Hili-li.

" Imagine," he said, " what the scenic ef-
fects must have been, everywhere within the
illumination of that great lake of fire, cover-
ing an area of nearly two hundred square
miles — that great lake of white, boiling,

232 A Strange Discovery

earthy matter, brilliantly lighting the long
antarctic night. Think of those mountains,
with the Olympian offshoot six miles in
height; and of the peak called Mount Olym-
pus, looming up ten thousand feet above
even that great mountain-range. Try to
picture the valleys, the chasms, the over-
hanging cliffs, the many smaller active cra-
ters, like mammoth watch-fires Hghted on
the mountain-tops in all directions; and the
masses of glistening salt, thrown by up-
heavals of the earth high upon the moun-
tain-side. Cannot you almost behold the
scene? May we not, with the brush of
fancy, paint for our mental vision many a
strange, weird picture? Here we see, high
on the mountain-front, a mass of crystal
salt — many millions of tons — thrown, by a
mere fillip of terrestrial power, thirty thou-
sand feet above the ocean level, to rest and
sparkle like a gem on the bosom of that old
mountain-god, Olympus. Then, still high-
er, on the very summit — for even here, in
the glare of this great crater, where evapo-
ration rains upward from the sea, all vapor
is quickly condensed and frozen on the
higher peaks — we see, like the tresses of
the aged, the pearly snow and ice over-
hanging the Olympian brow. Aye, may
we not even "

A Strange Discovery 233

Well, dear reader, I expect to be cen-
sured. As Bainbridge drew toward what I
suppose would, under any circumstances,
have been his close, I was sitting with my
face toward Arthur, and the actions of that
unpolished gem told me that the catastrophe
was at hand. Those who say that " the ex-
pected never happens" misinform us; for
the expected very frequently does happen.
The wretched boy did not — ^would not —
look at me, and I could not, of course, inter-
rupt the flow of eloquence that poured from
the lips of Bainbridge. What could I have
done? Even at this late day, I cannot see
what I could have done, though I did know
the nature of what Was coming. It was the
words " snow and ice " that added the last
straw which broke the camel's back, and let
fall the load of annoyance ; and as Bainbridge
uttered the words, " Aye, may we not even

," Arthur, that miserable factotum,

whom I had so rashly trusted, shot from his
chair into the air; and, with arms waving,
and eyes glistening with excitement, he
fairly yelled:

" Great geewhilikin ! Think of that ice,
and that salt, and that climate! Now if a
fellow only had a drove of Giganticus cows,
with old Olympus for 'em to run over free,
where would the other ice-cream fellows be?

234 -^ Strange Discovery

Free ice, free salt, free cream, free fodder,
and no end of 'em all, too! Why, in that
hot hole a man 'ud be a ice-cream king in no
time. Well, now! doesn't that make your
windows bulge? You're a shoutin', Doc.
Please don't speak again in the same lan-
guage till I rest my mind, if you love me ! "

I could not stop him. Frowning had no
efifect, and toward the end of his outburst I
even protested in words. But it was no use.
He spoke quickly, and he spoke very loudly,
and not a word was lost on Bainbridge.
Bainbridge had a fine sense of humor; but
like many other humorists, he did not relish
jocosities of which he was the subject. Any
levity in any manner connected with Hili-li,
I knew would be to him unendurable. He
had from the beginning taken the Peters
disclosures, and even the old sailor himself,
very seriously. Little happenings during
our stay at the old sailor's home, which had
brought a smile to my own face, had never
for a moment altered the countenance of
Bainbridge from the stem seriousness be-
coming that of one who is gathering facts of
the most solemn import. I am positive that
he would have taken with a poor grace the
slightest levity from even myself on the sub-
ject of Hili-li. But from the bell-boy of a
hotel ! Olympus to become a pasture field

A Strange Discovery 235

for mastodon cows! Its ice and its saline
wonders to be employed in the making of
ice-cream !

Well, I just sat, and said nothing, and
blamed myself. The thing was done, as it
is said, and could not be undone. Doctor
Bainbridge looked at me, with an injured but
resigned expression, which seemed to say,
"Well, you see you've done it; you woiild
allow the creature to drink in the nectar of
refined literary production, and one of the
natural results has followed." He took up
his hat, and more in grief than in anger, he
made his adieux, and quietly walked out of
the doorway, through the hallway, down the
stairs, and out of the house. And a moment
later I said:

" Now, young man, you probably see
what you have done ! We may, or we may
not hear more of Lilama, of Pym, of Ahpilus,
and the others. I am anxious to know what
became of the poor fellow, Ahpilus; and I
intend to find out, if I have to go to Peters
for the information." Then, as I saw the
boy was really repentant; and when I be-
gan to consider the fact that he could not
comprehend why Bainbridge should be of-
fended, when no ofifence had been intended,
I mentally threw all the blame upon myself,
and added :

236 A Strange Discovery

" But never mind; it does not amount to
much. Doctor Bainbridge will probably be
here to-morrow evening, and will, no doubt,
have forgotten, or at least buried the inci-
dent. But after this, Arthur, you may come
to me each morning, and as I dress I will
tell you all about what the evening before I
shall learn from the doctor. So, good-
night to you, and here is a dollar to help you
start the ice-cream parlor."

The Sixteenth Chapter

ON the following evening, at his usual
hour, Bainbridge entered my apart-
ment; and after the customary
greeting, seated himself. No men-
tion was made of Arthur's hapless
interruption of the evening before, Bain-
bridge acting as if that miserable incident
had not occurred.

" If I remember rightly," he said, " we left
Ahpilus lying with a broken back, and Pe-
ters standing by him, with Lilama crouch-
ing near; whilst on the opposite side of the
chasm or canyon stood Pym, Diregus, and
the boatman, who had accompanied the res-
cue party in their ascent of the mountain.

" After a moment of astonishment, Di-
regus inquired concerning the condition of
Ahpilus; and Peters replied that the maniac
not only lived, but was not in danger of dy-
ing; that he was scarcely conscious, how-
ever, and that even if fully aroused would in

237

238 A Strange Discovery

all probability not be able to walk — Peters
knowing from personal experience with sim-
ilar ' accidents ' what the results were likely
to be.

" When Lilama heard Peters' statement,
she approached the injured man — the friend
of her childhood and her girlhood — ^and did
what little she could to make his position at
least appear more comfortable.

" There was no possible way for the di-
vided party to unite, other than by returning
several miles down the mountain-side. Now
that Lilama was safe, and Ahpilus not only
mentally alienated from his people but also
physically helpless, a kindly feeling came to
the party for their old friend thus reduced
to a condition doubly lamentable, and very
pitiable to persons so refined and sensi-
tive as were the Hili-lites. There was some
discussion on the subject of Ahpilus's fut-
ure ; and then Peters said that he could easily
carry the injured man down the mountain-
side. This he at once began to do; and in
the course of four or five hours, during which
he stopped for a rest a number of times, he
reached a point in the descent at which the
canyon narrowed tQ a width of not more
than ten feet, and across which a rude foot-
bridge of logs had been constructed. Lil-
ama, as well as those on the opposite side

A Strange Discovery 239

of the chasm, had kept pace with Peters; and
the divided party now came together.

" Ahpilus was gently placed on the
ground; and as his old friends gathered
about him it was observed that not only
had consciousness returned, but that the
helpless man looked quite the Ahpilus of
former and happier days. As his old friends
looked into his eyes, those windows of the
mind, they saw a soul unruffled, and at
peace with nature.

" Then Diregus addressed to Ahpilus
some words of inquiry; but it was soon
apparent that the stricken man could an-
swer no question relating to recent days,
or even to the past year or two. In fact,
Diregus soon recognized that Ahpilus
knew nothing of his own past from a
period antedating his exile to the present
time. It appears that the nervous shock
which accompanied the breaking of his
spine had, in some way, dispelled his mad-
ness, and also those less maniacal, com-
paratively mild delusions which for several
years had clouded and perverted his other-
wise brilliant mind; so that he was again the
same loving and lovable Ahpilus of former
times; but in all the sixty or seventy years
that he might yet live, he never again would
be able to walk, or even to stand, unaided.

240 A Strange Discovery

" The party of five, carrying the helpless
man, sadly and silently continued on their
way to Volcano Bay, which in the course of
an hour they reached. There they found the
other boatmen waiting for them, and, also,
standing here and there in groups, a number
of the exiles, among them Medosus. It had
gone forth among these pariahs of Hili-li-
land, that something unusual was astir; and,
fearing something, they knew not what, they
had determined to observe the movements
of the invading party. Diregus soon ex-
plained what had brought them to Olympus,
and the results of their search. The exiles
were at first quite unable to believe that Pe-
ters had crossed the chasm at the point
stated, though lying was in Hili-li a lost art,
the history of that country stating positively
that but three adult liars (visitors excepted)
had existed in Hili-li for five hundred years,
the last of whom had, two centuries before,
died. When the Olympians (as the exiles
were generally in derision called) learned of
Ahpilus's condition, and of its cause, it ap-
peared for a few moments that Peters would
be attacked; but the soothing words of Pym
and Diregus, and the presence of Lilama,
whom they knew had been in extreme dan-
ger, as well as the expression on the face of
Peters when he first grasped the idea that an

A Strange Discovery 241

attack upon him was imminent — all of these
things together prevented trouble.

" When the party had made Ahpilus as
comfortable as possible in the bottom of the
boat, and had seated themselves preparatory
to their return, Medosus stepped down to
the shore, and asked Diregus if he would
convey for the exiles a message to the King
and Councillors of Hili-li,andalsoto the aged
mystic, Masusselili, who, though not an of-
ficial, was in reality the chief adviser of those
who did control the kingdom. Diregus,
whose father was perhaps second only to the
King — it was supposed by many that the
Duke was the real power behind the throne,
and it was within the range of reasonable
possibility that his son, Diregus, might
some day reign — replied that he must hear
the message before making any promise.
Then Medosus, knowing that his former
friend and schoolmate was at heart in sym-
pathy with the exiles, and did not really
believe them to be in any way vicious (Di-
regus himself had twice offended, as had a
majority of all Hili-lite youths, past and
present; but he had not offended for a third
time), spoke as follows :

" ' Say for us to His Majesty, and to the
Honorable Councillors, that we, the so-called
Exiles of Olympus, request our release, and

242 A Strange Discovery

also permission to return to Hili-li. In mak-
ing this request we are not willing to say that
we have ever in the past done to the State
any serious wrong. We have, however,
reached a time of life when we are willing to
abjure the delights and benefits of wrestling,
of ground-ball, of bat-ball, and of other ath-
letic sports. We are willing to promise not
again to visit the savages of surrounding isl-
ands — a rare sport. We regret the broken
neck of young Selimus, which occurred dur-
ing a game of ground-ball some three years
ago, and we regret the accidental breaking
of a few other bones; but we think these ac-
cidents no more deplorable than the death
of Testube the scholar, or the blinding of the
chemist, Amurosus — accidents which oc-
curred whilst they were in their own labora-
tories, performing experiments of no ma-
terial benefit, so far as we know, to the
people of Hili-li. I might also allude to
the lamentable death of Solarsistus, who
some four years ago fell from his tower
whilst observing the noted shower of fall-
ing meteors. And we ask these wise men
— particularly MasusseHli, whose mind is
as cultivated as his body is neglected — ^what
they think would become of the people
of Hili-li if, at some future time, even so
few as one thousand such men as these

A Strange Discovery 243

two strangers standing there should make
war upon us, assuming that the decrees of
those in power shall have been for a single
generation faithfully observed. When the
barbarian of the north overcame our ances-
tors in ancient Rome, it was only after indo-
lent habits had sapped the physical power of
the patrician ; and when we here repelled with
ease many times our number of barbarians,
it was whilst yet our race was hardy from its
combat with adverse forces in this then
new land. We have not forgotten the
strange power which Masusselili is able to
exert over a Hmited number of persons at
one time. We are not unaware of the benef-
icent results of those laws and customs that
compel the most of our people, between the
ages of eighteen and fifty, to perform physi-
cal labor during twelve hours of each week ;
but we maintain that the elements of contest
and danger are necessary concomitants of
physical exertion, if we are to acquire and
retain the manly quality of physical bravery,
and that other quality so frequently wanting
in him who is only a scholar — fortitude.

" ' Look,' he continued, pointing to Pe-
ters. ' There stands a man inured to physi-
cal danger. A few hours ago he was placed
where prompt resolution was demanded to
decide the fate of one of the loveliest creat-

244 ^ Strange Discovery

ures upon whom the light of yonder crater-
fire ever shone — perhaps upon whom the sun
ever shone; he had scarcely sixty seconds of
time in which to determine whether she
should die, or he should take the chance of
a terrible death, with a hand-to-hand con-
flict, a powerful madman for an adversary,
certain to confront him should his leap by a
miracle prove successful. To have leaped
over an abyss of half the width of that one,
and then to have met an ordinary adversary,
would have been a wonderfully brave deed.
He decided promptly — and, too, he suc-
ceeded. No man in Hili-li could have done
half as much, even had he dared attempt the
feat.

" ' That, I think, is all,' continued Medo-
sus. ' We have rarely found our rulers deaf
to reasonable petitions, and we believe that
they will, upon mature deliberation, annul
our sentences of ten years' banishment. If
I do not overtax your time and your pa-
tience, I should like to ask you, Diregus, to
suggest to your father and to Masusaelili this
thought : Since the termination of those ex-
tended surveys which the State inaugurated
and terminated after the departure of that
ship which visited us about two hundred and
■ fifty years ago, we have been aware that
Hili-li is situated in a great inland sea, about

A Strange Discovery 245

twelve hundred miles in diameter, which sea
contains from two hundred to three hundred
islands, and in which our main island occu-
pies a position some three hundred miles
from the nearest mainland in one direction,
and some nine hundred miles from the near-
est mainland in another direction. We are
also aware that the sailing vessel which came
to us found an entrance through this vast
ring-like continent, which entrance-way is
only three hundred miles in width, and is the
only means of access to this inland sea, ex-
cept a narrower channel diametrically op-
posite to the broader one. The broader
opening, in its main part, is traversed by
warm currents outward, which remain warm
until the continent is passed; and by one
broad central warm current inward, which is
very swift, and the source of the great
warmth of which we have nev6r been able to
determine. The narrower passage, gener-
ally completely frozen, or choked with ice,
conveys to the central sea only water at
nearly the freezing temperature. The main-
land consists chiefly of volcanic mountains,
is apparently covered with ice, and is wholly
impassable. Now, we have long thought
ourselves safe from the outer world, as we
really are from the savages of the other isl-
ands within this great sea. We know that

246 A Sirange T>iscovRR\

in the first thousand years of our history
there came to us once two wrecked sailors,
and at another time a single sailor; then
came the ship; and since then every ten to
thirty years we have had some token, ani-
mate or inanimate, from the great beyond.
But none that came, save the ship-load of
two hundred and fifty years ago, ever left us;
and those who sailed that vessel could not
again have found us, had they tried during
the remainder of their lives. Hence, our
Councillors appear to think that we shall for-
ever remain secreted here in safety. Now I
only wish to suggest to those who are wiser,
but whose minds are not like ours sharp-
ened by hardship and solitude, that some
great event in the vast outer world must
have occurred precedingthe visit of that ship.
The conditions of the world have in some
manner changed. Yet, whilst the vast ring-
like continent of ice-covered volcanoes will
long protect us, the warm strait will be dis-
covered and mapped, and then design will
carry to us many, over the same course by
which chance has conveyed a few. As usual,
I suppose, these two men will not be allowed
to leave us. But in some way the outside
world will learn of us and of our exhaustless
supplies of these pebbles' (he pointed to nug-
gets of gold lying on the shore of the bay),

A Strange Discovery 247

' which we know are the same as others in
our museum, that our ancestors brought
from Rome, and of which — so says our an-
cient history — one pebble the size of a finger-
end would purchase a human captive ! Some
chance will carry to those people (no doubt
the descendants of those barbarians who al-
most exterminated our Roman ancestors) a
knowledge of this.' Here Medosus picked
from the ground a nugget of gold about the
size of a large orange, and threw it carelessly
from him into the bay. ' Aurum,' he said,
disdainfully ; ' aurum, the curse of our an-
cestors! What would not the outer world
endure to gain the ship-loads of this stuff
that lie scattered over our volcanic islands?
Stuff which we use only in building and for
pavements, because it is easily worked, and
bright, and lasting. What will our people
do when ship-loads of men like these two
strangers come to us? And, come, too, not
almost starved and without weapons, but
with spears, and practised arms to use their
spears. Astuteness is a poor weapon, when
it is the only weapon, against men who are
maddened with avarice: bravery, physical
power, fortitude; the strong arm, backed by
the quick eye, and the mind inured to dan-
ger — these, in such a time of need, will alone
avail to protect our lives, our land, and our
homes from a ruthless foe.

248 A Strange Discovery

" ' Pardon my prolixity; but, as I talked,
I became more interested in the fate of my
countrymen, even than in that of my fellow-
exiles and myself. You understand me, my
old friend? I know that you will speak for
us. Good-by.'

" And then wishing the exiles good-by,
the party in the boat moved from the shore
— ^at first by paddle-power; but on reaching
the outlet of Volcano Bay the sails of their
boat were spread for the run across the
open sea."

Here Doctor Bainbridge paused for a mo-
ment in his narration, lighted a cigar, took
a whifif or two, and then continued:

" You must pardon me for entering so
fully into the afifairs of Medosus and his fel-
low-exiles. It was only by tact and patience
that, little by little, I gathered from Peters
the facts. My excuse for this verbosity is,
that from the speech of Medosus — whose
words show that he supposed Pym and Pe-
ters would never be allowed to leave Hili-li
— we obtain, better than from all other
sources of information which were opened to
Peters, an insight of the geographical knowl-
edge, and of many of the peculiarities, of a
strange, isolated people — a people which, be-
yond all doubt, I think, is descended from
the pure imperial Roman stock; and also be-

A Strange Discovery 249

cause it explains the means by which the
exiles afterward obtained their liberty, and
were thus enabled to assist their relatives
and friends in the City of Hili-li, at a time
when, though of brief duration, the islands
of Hili-li were threatened with depopulation.
It seems that the message of Medosus,
joined with the lesson of Lilama's abduc-
tion, carrying as it did a suggestion of future
possibilities should the exiles continue to in-
crease in number whilst growing more reck-
less, and at the same time no strangers be at
hand to assist in overcoming them — these
considerations, and the influence of Pym,
who described the quality of English, Ger-
man, French, and American soldiers that
were produced in lands where, he said, sports
and games similar to those of Hili-li (he ex-
plained the nature of sparring, cricket, etc.)
wei'e in no manner restricted by law. (This,
you will remember, was in the year 1828.)

" The rescue party were met at the Duke's
landing by all the residents of the palace,
and by many relatives and friends of Lilama,
who had gathered to receive her. As soon
as Peters' wonderful feat was explained, he
became the hero of the island.

" The Hili-htes showed themselves in one
respect much like other races. They had no
sooner decided to rescind the interdict

250 A Strange Discovery

against the hitherto obnoxious athletic
games, than all classes began to patronize
these sports, and immediately they became
very popular; and to the other games was
added that of contests at leaping. Some of
the feats performed at this time by Peters
were certainly astonishing. One of his per-
formances which took place during an ex-
hibition in the presence of the elite of Hili-li,
was to leap from an improvised platform,
placed eighty feet above the ground, grasp
the limb of a tree which projected about
thirty feet beneath and several feet away
from the platform, instantly drop to another
limb, twenty-five feet lower, and then to the
ground. To an observer he appeared to
jump from the platform, to strike one limb
and then another in his descent, and to fall,
a mass of bruised flesh and broken bones,
upon the earth; the real climax being when,
instead, he fell lightly on his feet, and walked
away to prepare for his next act in this public
display.

" But we must hasten on. And before
proceeding to subjects of greater interest, I
will tell at once what was the future of Ah-
pilus. He had when a boy been noted for
a love of study, and now when he could no
longer walk, he turned his attention to liter-
ary pursuits. Masusaelili took an interest in

A Strange Discovery 25 1

the unfortunate young man, and allowed
him at first to be brought occasionally to the
studio which the reader has already visited,
and later to become an assistant in his re-
searches. Peters and Pym felt very kindly
to the poor fellow, and evinced their regard
by inventing and making for him a sort of
chair on two main wheels and a small third
wheel, upon which he could sit and guide
himself with ease and comfort from place to
place in the city, and that, too, with quite as
great speed as he had in the past been able
to attain by walking. The last thing heard
of him by Peters was, that he had begun a
history of the Hili-Hte people, from the set-
tlement of Hili-U to 1828. And this reminds
me to say that, to Pym and Peters, one of
the strangest things in Hili-li was their
count of time, which appeared the same as
our own. It was not in fact the same, how-
ever, though Peters insists that it was; for
whilst we, of course, count time according to
the Gregorian calendar, the Hili-lites must
have counted time according to the Julian
calendar. This would have placed the Hili-
lites about eleven days in arrear of Pym's
count — a difference which, under the cir-
cumstances, Peters might easily have over-
looked.

" Not many weeks after the rescue of

252 A Strange Discovery

Lilania, she and Pym were married accord-
ing to the usual form of Hili-li. The wed-
ding ceremony was a very quiet one. I have
thought that perhaps the customs of Hili-li
might account for the lack of any festivity;
and, again, that the Ahpilus incident may
have precluded all social gaiety at such a
time, the injured man being still in a precari-
ous condition."

Here Bainbridge paused for a moment,
took a turn or two across the floor, relit the
long-neglected cigar that he held in his fin-
gers, seated himself, and continued:

The Seventeenth Chapter

IT is pleasant to dwell on this period
in the life of young Pym. We
think of his home on the far-away isl-
and of Nantucket, with the loving
mother, the proud father, the doting
old grandfather — all cast aside, and proba-
bly forever, by the momentary folly of a boy;
then of his connection with the ship-mutiny
— unquestionably one of the most horrible
positions in which it is ever the fate of man
to stand; the death of his friend and his
friend's father; the shipwreck, and the long,
lonely days of watching, in hunger and thirst,
for a sail; the final loss of all companions
save a gorilla-like half-breed, whose animal
instinct of love and fidelity fell about the
poor boy like a protecting garment. Then
comes this bright spot in his life away in
Hili-liland, like a momentary rift in the
clouds of a stormy day. For Pym the sun
shone with a heavenly effulgence, whilst the
253

254 ^ Strange Discovery

obstructions of a dire destiny were for a time
removed; but when again the clouds closed
between him and the brightness of existence,
they closed forevermore. Yet this mere
boy, into whose life hardship and danger had
introduced more than the experience of most
old men, enjoyed, too, what many very aged
men never have possessed — ^what Alexander
the Great never possessed — that of which
wealth or other source of power seems
actually to deprive many men. He enjoyed
what was worth more than all that ambi-
tion backed by wealth and power can give
— that is, the faithful love of a beautiful
woman, loved truly in return. This boy was
loved by one who was capable with her
witching loveliness of satisfying every de-
sire, enthralling the imagination, rousing
in the heart that passion which inspires the
mind to regions where it throbs in harmony
with the Divine, and touches — as might
some dying desert-waif with his parched lips
a cooling fountain — the very source of love
itself. But the most of human love — how
debased and debasing, how vile! God, for
purposes of His own, links for mankind the
Aphroditic passion to the love Divine. The
two are separable, and man assuredly sepa-
rates them. True love may be witnessed as
low in the scale of life, and as high, as con-

A Strange Discovery 255

sciousness is found. We find it in the heart
of the faithful animal that dies on a loved
master's grave, howling in anguish its life
away. And we find it in the purity of wom-
an's heart, where it rests ready for the con-
tact that is to ignite it into illumination for-
ever. Woman herself is divine. Man has
placed her everywhere, sometimes behind
the barred doors of a harem, sometimes
on the tlirone of empire; but he has not
blotted out the divine.

" With Pym it may not have been a love
that would have carried him safely into and
through a beatific old age — or it may have
been; we choose to think that it was a
growth that would have bloomed perennial-
ly. It was, I think, such a love as every
man of imagination feels to be a mountain
of wealth beside which all else is dwarfed to
utter nothingness — a concretion from the
endless and eternal ocean of love — a glimpse
into that paradise where exists the Al-
mighty, who is Love.

" I should judge from what Peters knows
well enough, but which I gleaned by patient
toil from that wicked though unsophisti-
cated old segment of intelligence, that these
two young persons had a most delightful,
though extremely peculiar, wedding jour-
ney. The months had flown, until it was

256 A Strange Discovery

again December — the antarctic midsummer
month, in which, and the greater part of
January, there is no night.

" At this, the dehghtful season of the ant-
arctic year, a beautiful yacht-like vessel was
equipped; and with Peters a? captain, and
four men under his orders; Lilama, and a
lady friend, with two maids; and Pym, ac-
companied by his now close friend, Diregus,
the journey began.

" To Peters' mind, the most remarkable
part of this pleasure excursion, was the ex-
treme differences in climatic conditions
which the party experienced within the
range of a single day's, or even a single
hour's travel. In December and January,
Hili-li was so warm as scarcely to be habit-
able — certainly not comfortably habitable
for natives of the central temperate zone of
North America; yet at this same period of
time, there was a small island on the me-
ridian of Hili-li, and only thirty miles from
the large surface-crater, on which the tem-
perature was about 65° F. There was, just
across ' The Mountain ' — ^as the Hili-lites
frequently spoke of the rings of mountain-
ranges surrrounding the central crater — an
island of somewhat greater area, upon which
ice was at all times to be found at a few feet
above sea-level, and which, during eight

A Strange Discovery 257

months of the year, was so cold that no ani-
mal life could have existed upon it. Then,
at variable distances from the crater, and in
different directions, islands were to be found
of almost any desired temperature. The
wealthier Hili-lites owned summer resi-
dences on these out-lying islands, situated
at sailing distances varying from an hour to
six hours' travel from Hili-li.

" The wedding-party, owing to the social
position or the personal qualities of its mem-
bers — which included official rank, heredi-
tary prestige, beauty, mental culture, and
preternatural prowess — was everywhere
warmly welcomed. It was expected, re-
ceived with open arms, and every source of
entertainment was exhausted to make its
visit at each island enjoyable.

The party visited the island owned by
Lilama, where they found the temperature
quite cold, but the island comfortably habit-
able. It was at about the same distance from
the crater as was Hili-li ; and was so situated
as to be of nearly one temperature all the
year round. They found at work there a
body of men, numbering not more than fif-
teen or twenty. It seems that upon making
a trial of the various islands as a home for the
descendants of the animals brought south by
the original settlers, it was found that upon

258 A Strange Discovery

this island conditions were the best for rais-
ing sheep for their wool; and from the wool
raised, Lilama's income was much greater
than from the precious stones found there
later, though precious stones were found on
no other island in Hili-liland. Peters knows
next to nothing, either theoretically or prac-
tically, of geology; but he says this island
looked very dififerent from the others in that
region, and that its mountainous central por-
tion appeared altogether dififerent from any
other of the mountains in Hili-liland. Asked
to say if he had ever seen a mountain-range
which Lilama's mountain resembled, he re-
plied, but could not say why he so thought,
that it reminded him of various parts of the.
Appalachian range.

" In strolling about the island, the party
entered a small warehouse in which the pre-
cious stones were kept. Peters says that the
gems which he there saw were of all sizes
up to a large hen-egg, and of all colors ex-
cept green. He particularly remembers be-
ing given several beautiful specimens, in-
cluding blue, red, yellow, violet, gray, and
white stones, all transparent; a black stone,
and a brown-gray opaque stone. These
were, of course, the sapphire, ruby, topaz,
amethyst, and other varieties of conmdum,
the islands evidently containing no emeralds

A Strange Discovery 259

or diamonds. Lilama selected from a tray
a stone the color of pigeon-blood, and about
the size of an English walnut, which she
handed to Pym as she might have handed
him a beautiful rose. In Europe or America
this stone would have purchased a fair-sized
town.

Peters described a strange natural phe-
nomenon that exists on an island not more
than half a mile in length, which the party
visited after leaving Lilama's island. Near
the centre of this last-mentioned island, says
Peters, is a volcanic mountain about four
thousand feet in height, with an extinct
crater reaching down through the centre of
the mountain to within a hundred feet of the
sea-level, and, at its lower part, communicat-
ing with the outer surface by a tunnel some
ten feet in diameter. Upon entering, by
means of the tunnel, this sunken crater, a
gallery was found, ascending spirally by at
least twenty turns to the extreme peak of
the mountain. The diameter of the crater
was about one hundred feet at the bottom,
about two hundred feet at the top — the di-
ameter widening at each complete circuit of
the gallery by from eight to twelve feet, the
breadth of the gallery varying from four feet
to six. Looking from below at the opening
above, the spot of sky, says Peters, looked

26o A Strange Discovery

like the full moon. The length of the gallery,
as its gradient is about forty-five degrees,
must be about a mile and a half. Out of the
gallery, at several points in the ascent, passes
a small side-tunnel, communicating with the
exterior.

" On still another island, about a hundred
miles from Hili-li, but on about the same me-
ridian — that is to say, in the same warm air-
current, though the heat of the current was
there much diminished by dilution — the
party visited certain ruins which had always
greatly puzzled the Hili-lites. The island
was quite large, and was covered with agri-
cultural farms, from which a single crop was
taken each year. The ruins were quite un-
injured by time ; and one small stone struct-
ure was so complete as to be scarcely more
dilapidated in appearance than would be any
other old and neglected stone building in
Hili-li. The stone of which the various
structures were composed had never in all
the centuries of their residence there been
found by the Hili-lites elsewhere than in
these buildings; the supposition being that
it came from the great surrounding con-
tinent. But, after all, the real peculiarity of
these buildings was in their architecture.
The dififlculty of obtaining from Peters any
architectural facts, you will never appreciate

A Strange Discovery 261

unless you attempt, as I have done, to pro-
cure such information. He declares that in
these buildings were neither columns nor
arches; and he also declares that the absence
of arches and columns he knows, not only
from his own observation, but because that
fact was alluded to in his presence by the
Hili-lite members of the party; yet he is
equally certain that in one of the larger of
the ruins the roof was intact. How a roof
could be supported without reasonable verti-
cal resistance, and without arch resistance,
I am unable to say ; and it is wholly improba-
ble that the walls in a building of its dimen-
sions could, without an arch, support a roof.
The Hellenes, you recall, were very artful in
hiding from observation the arch, though
they frequently employed it. I admit that I
must have greatly bored old man Peters
over this subject of architecture; and as I
myself know next to nothing of the subject,
technically, and he knows absolutely nothing
of it, technically or otherwise, and as he took
no interest in the ruins even when they were
before his eyes, you will understand that my
information concerning these ruins is not
very clear. It was also utterly impossible
for me to gain from the old man data upon
which to base an opinion as to the style of
architecture of these structures. The build-

262 A strange Discovery

ings generally were very large, very beauti-
ful, and constructed in a style entirely dis-
tinct from any known ancient style — that is,
for instance, they were not Hellenic, or
Egyptian, or Assyrian, or Roman. This
much the Hili-lites knew and said. Then,
further, there were inscriptions in characters
unknown to the world at the time of the bar-
barian overflow into the Roman Empire, and
also unknown to Pym. In one of the ruins
was a large window made of blue and yellow
transparent corundum, in which appeared an
inscription made by a setting of rubies.

" What a strange world, in which entire
races come and go, some of them leaving a
ruin or two, and perhaps an odd indecipher-
able inscription here and there! The world
was fortunate indeed to grasp, from the ob-
literated and forgotten past, Hebraism and
Hellenism — the moral and the beautiful;
from which man's craving for goodness has
resulted in Christianity; and from which his
impulses of sweetness and brightness and
loveliness have developed the Renascence!
Between goodness and beauty, why should
there ever be conflict? Pure goodness is
pure love, and love is almost synonymous
with beauty. — But, pardon the digression.

" The tour of the islands comprising Hili-
liland continued through December and

A Strange Discovery 263

January. I could tell you much of the social
gayeties in many a bright country-home dur-
ing these two months; but in these Peters
was not much interested, and I could not get
from him many of the particulars. Thus far
I have striven to keep all facts unpolluted
by any possible alloy of my own imagination
— let me continue to be, in word and in
spirit, true to the facts. Were I to attempt
a description of these island festivities in far-
away Hili-liland, perhaps, inadvertently —
the facts being meagre — I might say some-
thing bordering on untruth; and, rather
than untruth — a thousand times rather —
silence.

" I will close for this evening by saying
that the wedding-party arrived at the isl-
and of Hili-li about February ist — the year
being 1829. Some time before starting on
the tour, Lilama had begun the consti'uc-
tion of a new home; and by the time of her
return it was completed. Her new resi-
dence was not large, but it was elegant.
Here the happy couple dwelt, Peters having
an apartment to himself which was enough
to set a sailor wild with joy. Peters says
that he grew to like very much what he calls
* volcano tobacco; ' that it was ' good and
strong ' — to his taste all the better for
that. The only mistake that Lilama's archi-

264 A Strange Discovery

tect made in his plan for her new home was
in not having Peters' apartment either on
the roof, or else next door. Peters now
smokes American tobacco ; and even now —
but let the past go; I did not sit on the edge
of the old sailor's bed for thirty hours for
nothing. To-morrow evening I shall tell
you of the great catastrophe which occurred
on the island of Hili-li during the visit of
Pym and Peters."

Here Bainbridge closed his recital for the
evening. I believe that he would have re-
mained for at least a few minutes longer;
but as he was about to reply to a question of
mine, Castleton rushed into the room, and
Bainbridge departed.

Castleton, who was overflowing with joy-
ous excitement, informed me that the
dreaded yellow fever of the South was on
its way North ; and that if I would delay my
return to England for a week or ten days I
could see it. His remark did not much
alarm me. Then I proceeded to tell him in
outline what had become of Ahpilus, of the
marriage of Lilama and Pym, and of the
wedding-tour of the islands. As I closed,
he said:

" Young man, you will soon be returning
to England, that lordly nation to whose
hind-quarters the sun is kinder than to its

A Strange Discovery 265

head-quarters. When you get home tell
your countrymen of the discoveries you have
here made. Tell them of the wonders of
Hili-li — but be careful. This fellow Bain-
bridge is a romantic youth, and he is liable to
lead you astray in some important respects.
Tell your noble countrymen of the central
crater — that, no doubt, Peters saw; as to
the Hili-lites being descendants of the pure
stock of ancient Rome, that, too, I believe.
But do not repeat this foolish theory about
love which he introduces into Peters' narra-
tive. The wise, practical, and puissant resi-
dents of that Corinthian Capital of Brains —
I refer to London — will know better. Oh,
yes; women are true! — very true! Better
than wealth — pshaw! better than empire — •
pooh! That nonsense will pass at twenty-
five; at forty a man has some brains. The
' constancy ' of women — that gets me ! Why,
sir, I once loved three women at the same
time, and not one of the three was true to
me — yet Bainbridge talks of a woman's con-
stancy, single-heartedness, and such chimeri-
cal stuff — ^the kind of stuff, that, with youth,
takes the place of the recently discarded
nursery fiction. I think of the hundreds of
women that I have loved, beginning in my
early boyhood, passing through my adoles-
cence to the acme of my powers, and even

266 A Strange Discovery

now as I stand on the verge of my desue-
tude! Surely some one of these many
women would have been constant, if women
have any constancy in their make-up.
Show me a woman howling out her life
on my grave, and then I'll believe Bain-
bridge. But I know all about Bainbridge.
I know where he goes the evenings that he
doesn't come here. Never mind — I'm
silent as the grave. I don't need to tell a
man of your superlative acumen what Bain-
bridge's talk implies. He mustn't talk to
me though about woman's constancy
and single-heartedness till he's ten years
older; let him tell that stuff to Peters and
the other mariners."

After some further talk, Castleton re-
marked:

" It seems, then, according to Bainbridge,
that we moderns owe about all we have to
the Jew and the Dago! Now, men less in-
telligent than you and I, after looking at the
average Jew and Dago as seen to-day in the
United States, would doubt this assertion.
I cannot dispute it, however; for through
the ancient Jew certainly came Christianity,
and through the ancients in Greece and
Italy our art."

He paused for a moment, and then con-
tinued:

Discovery 267

" A delightfully euphonious set of names
those Hili-lites possess. The name Hili-li is
not bad itself: Hili-li, HiYi-lite, /fili-^iland —
pretty good. Li-la-ma, Ah-/>e-lus, Di-re-
gus, Me-c?o-sus, Ma-.yM-se-/i-la — all pretty
fair. I have no doubt that Bainbridge
would spell them so as to produce a Latin
appearance. And this reminds me of a cer-
tain name not Latin."

I saw that the doctor was about to re-
count a " personal experience." He con-
tinued :

" One day a stranger came to our town —
a plain, clean-looking, blue-eyed sort of
scientific fellow from somewhere so far out
in the suburbs of Europe that the name of
his country or province has wholly slipped
my memory — a mighty rare thing, by the
by, and it always galls me when I forget any-
thing. This chap came here to look at coal,
or to hammer rocks, or to look for curiosities.
Well, he ran up against me. Don't ask me
his name — I believe he spelled it S-c-h-w-o-
j-k-h-h-j-z-y-t-y-h-o B-j-h-z-o-w-h-j-u-g-h-
s-c-h-k-j. One day he asked me to intro-
duce him to a certain Bellevue capitalist.
The fellow had pleased me, and I agreed
to do the introducing — partly, I admit,
to see whether a man that gutteralled his
words out of his stomach could swindle

268 A Strange Discovery

one of our own sharpers that talked
through his nose. But now came the
rub: how was I to introduce a man when
I couldn't utter his name? I used to prac-
tice at pronouncing that name as I rode
around in my buggy, but it was no go. At
last the day came when I was to introduce
the fellow with a surplus of knowledge to
the fellow with a surplus of cash. That
morning I awoke with the worst sorethroat
of my life. I felt as if I had two boiled pota-
toes in my throat. The passage from my
nose to my windpipe was closed for repairs,
and that from my mouth to my throat was
seven-eighths closed. Pretty soon, just from
recent habit, I began to practise on the sci-
entific chap's name. Great Scott! I could
pronounce it better than its owner could.
There were certain grunts and sneezes in
the name — particularly one syllable be-
tween a grunt and a sneeze — that I sup-
pose no Anglo-Saxon had ever before or
has ever since uttered correctly; but they
were nothing to me, so long as my sore-
throat lasted."

Then Castleton rushed from the room;
calling back from the head of the stairs, and
in tones intentionally audible to every man
and woman on that floor of the hotel :

" It's coming, sir, depend upon it — the

A Strange Discovery 269

genuine yellow fever — evaded the New Or-
leans quarantine three weeks ago — three
cases at Shreveport and two at Memphis re-
ported — talk, too, of a case in St. Louis.
Heavens! but I hope a beneficent Creator
will not allow some other doctor to get the
first case, when, happily, it shall have
reached Bellevue."

The last sentence was uttered sotio voce,
as he descended the stairs.

The Eighteenth Chapter

" "W" T appears," continued Bainbridge, on
I the following evening, " that Hili-li
JL was subject to the recurrence about
once in forty-seven years of a strange
thermic phenomenon, the mean du-
ration of which was about fifty hours. This
change had occurred twenty-one times in the
preceding thousand years; its duration had
once been as brief as thirty hours, and at
another time had lasted one hundred and
twenty hours. The interval between two of
its visitations had once been somewhat less
than eight years; whilst at the period of
Pym and Peters' presence in Hili-li, it had
not occurred for eighty-six years and some
months. For some reason that could not be
conjectured, at these times the wind-currents,
generally varying but slightly in force and
duration, changed, the wind coming from a
point of the compass almost diametrically
opposite to its usual direction, and increas-
270

A Strange Discovery 271

ing in velocity and force to that of a tempest
or blizzard. The result was, that in a very
few hours the temperature of Hili-li fell to
about zero Fahrenheit, if in December or
January; to 60° or 70° Fahrenheit below
freezing, if in July or August. During the
first few hours of the change, owing to the
extremely moist state of the atmosphere for
many miles in all directions from the crater
of Hili-li, there occurred a heavy snowfall
— which, however, diminished as the tem-
perature fell, until at somewhat above the
zero point it ceased.

" The government of Hili-li, by laws and
by the encouragement of custom, did much
to prevent damage from these storms —
which, as I have intimated, were a combina-
tion of hurricane and snow-storm, with a
very sudden knd rapid fall of temperature;
and when the interval between two of them
was not greater than twenty years, the pro-
visions made by the state were ample to
prevent loss of life. By the law of the land,
residence houses had to be built in such a
manner that at least one room in each house
could be warmed by a fire. Fire for pur-
poses of warmth was never in Hili-li re-
quired, except during these storms; and all
cooking was done on a peculiar stove made
chiefly of gold, the fuel of which was either

272 A Strange Discovery

fish oil, or another oil termed by the boat-
men who sold it ' continent oil ' — or, rather,
by a name corresponding in the Hili-li
language to those words in the English.
The law further provided that on the prem-
ises of each home wood should be kept,
ready for use, in chests of a size convenient
for two persons to carry into the room in
which it was to be burned. By this means,
the worst that could happen to a family was
that its members might suddenly at any
time be confined to a single room, comfort-
ably warmed, for from thirty to a hundred
hours, or thereabouts. Even if there should
be very little food in any one home, or if the
wood supply should be neglected, the next
door neighbor could be relied upon for
succor.

" Ninety-four years prior to the summer
that now concerns us, a cold spell had
occurred after an interval of eighty-one
years, which lasted a hundred and ten hours,
and during which one-third of the inhabit-
ants of Hili-li, between hunger and cold,
lost their lives. Not more than one hundred
persons remembered the last preceding
storm, and they must have been very young
children when it occurred; and even they
felt no alarm on the subject, as the storm
preceding it had happened about sixteen

A Strange Discovery 273

years earlier, and, though a light one, was
sufficient to alarm both the rulers and the
masses, and resulted in a state of prepared-
ness for the next storm. But now, the
middle-aged men knew of these cold spells
only as matters of history, to which they
gave little practical attention; and from the
lips of their grandparents, who, as I have
said, had never personally known one of
them to cause serious distress or loss of life.

" On the morning of February 17, 1829,
there was not on the Island of Hili-li a single
residence which had the wood-supply con-
templated by the forgotten statute relating
to that subject; there were few homes that
had in store food sufficient for more than
forty-eight hours use; and, though most
families were in possession of some oil, their
cook-stoves were not constructed for heat-
ing, and were connected with flues in out-
buildings ; and, further, there was not enough
oil on the island to have warmed the city
at such a time for twenty-four hours.

" It must also be remembered that the
Hili-lites were accustomed to a temperature,
all the year through, year in and year out,
of 90° to 108° Fahrenheit scale; and that
for a resident of England, or of the United
States above the latitude of Washington
City, a temperature of ten degrees below

274 ^ Strange Discovery

zero vi^ould be quite as well borne as would a
temperature of thirty degrees above zero by
these islanders. There was little physical
and mental inurement to cold, and the light-
est of clothing was worn. A resident of
Hili-li, when business compelled him to visit
an island on which the temperature was cold
enough to freeze water, prepared himself
personally for the journey as would a Swede
or Norwegian for a journey of exploration to
the North Pole.

". In the night between February i6th and
1 7th, Peters, who was in the habit in Hili-li
of sleeping in puris naturalibus, awoke in a
shiver. He arose, and closing his window-
sash began to look around his room for
bed-covering; but he found only a sheet,
and a very fine wool bed-spread, which he
drew over him as he once more assumed a
recumbent position. He again fell asleep;
but in an hour awoke, shivering harder than
before. He then dressed, and lighting his
pipe, walked up and down the floor. Then
he looked from the window, and saw that a
fine snow was falling, the separately almost
invisible flakes whirling in sharp spirals as
they fell. The sailor instinct — the aptitude
of the navigator — instantly told him what
this thermic change meant for Hili-li. Oth-
ers in the house were now moving about,

A Strange Discovery 275

and Peters sought them out. Pym did not
seem at once to realize the danger; and Lil-
ama said she had heard of these storms, but
did not think that they lasted long. All ex-
cept Peters were wrapped in shawl-like gar-
ments, and some of the servants had about
their forms light rugs which they had taken
from the floors. Soon, however, all except
Pym and Peters were shivering; and every
article of covering obtainable was in use.
Lilama told a maid to bring out her dresses
and wrappers, which she divided among the
servants, each donning several garments.
Peters, stoical, but always on the alert, called
Pym aside, and explained to him that this
change meant nothing less than the devasta-
tion of Hili-li — that the temperature was
steadily falling, the wind increasing, and that
the storm was only beginning. Pym could
not but perceive that the cold was due to a
pronounced alteration in the direction of
wind-currents; and that under the circum-
stances the cold would of necessity increase
to the point of normal antarctic tempera-
ture — no doubt below zero — unless the wind
should before then change. Quickly his
mind grasped the circumstances in which
they were placed. They were on an island,
situated in water navigable at all seasons and
hours, wnth the chief food-supply on near-by

276 A Strange Discovery

islands, and each day brought to Hili-li for
that day's consumption ; they were in a city
practically without fuel; the inhabitants
were accustomed to heat, and wholly unused
to cold; the houses were built without pro-
tection against cold, because, except occa-
sionally for a few hours at a time, there were
no climatic conditions demanding such a
construction. Further, the climate being
very warm, there was not — except in the
possession of a hundred men whose business
took them on visits to islands lying outside
of the crater-warmed air-currents — a heavy
wrap of any kind, such as overcoat, cloak, or
shawl, in the entire city. Carpets were not
known in Hili-li, so it would be impossible
for the hard-pressed people to retire to bed,
where, covering the body with a few sheets
and some clothing, they might add the car-
pets, and, in hunger but in safety, remain
protected against those freezing blasts till
the wind should change. Pym compre-
hended the terrible position in which Lila-
ma and the other Hili-Htes stood; the ex-
tremity of desolation which must soon
prevail standing, out before him like a vivid
picture, and for a moment overawing even
his brave, true soul. He did not doubt that
Peters and himself could withstand the cold,
though they might not be able to obtain

A Strange Discovery 277

more than a flimsy shelter from the biting
antarctic winds. He scarecly thought of him-
self — he thought only of Lilama, and, in a
measure, of the other residents of the beau-
tiful, stricken city. Exposure to danger had
made Pym in times of trouble a rapid
thinker, and the thoughts which I have men-
tioned passed through his mind in less than
a minute of time. Then he turned to Lilama,
and asked if there was beneath the house a
cellar. Fortunately there was — the house
was one of the few in Hili-li beneath a por-
tion of which a cellar was constructed as a
depository, and as a protection against heat
for certain articles of food, most of the resi-
dents not caring to construct cellars; arti-
cles of food easily destructible by heat being
twice daily brought to the city and distrib-
uted to the houses, and ice costing only the
expense of shipping it by water some six or
eight hours' sailing distance.

" Pym and Peters moved about the house,
making certain arrangements so rapidly as
to startle the languid Hili-lites. In ten or
fifteen minutes they had removed to the
cellar all the necessary furniture of a com-
fortable room, including a bedstead for
Lilama, and another for her two maids.
Three lamps were taken to the cellar,
lighted, and oil sufficient for a week's con-

278 A Strange Discovery

sumption placed conveniently near. The
house contained enough food to sustain Lila-
ma, and the women servants, for from six to
eight days. Within twenty minutes of the
time Peters had suggested to Pym the
danger of freezing to be apprehended, Lila-
ma and her maids were safely placed in the
cellar, and were making merry over their
strange surroundings and attire. Then
Pym and Peters hastened from the house, to
see what could be done for others.

" And now was witnessed the influence on
man, of heredity and environment, and the
insurmountable difficulties in the way, even
under the most pressing need, of overcom-
ing such influence. The Hili-lites in more
than a thousand years had fought only one
battle, and that five hundred years before;
nor had they found necessary any struggle
for food, or against rigorous climate. They
were a brainy people, and were almost super-
humanly perceptive in every sense organ
and in every nerve. But they were wanting
in that quality possessed by most European
peoples and by Americans, which takes
practical cognizance of the fact that prompt
action and fearlessness is the true protection
against danger. In the face of this great
calamity among the Hili-lites, even the
leading men seemed paralyzed. Not that

A Strange Discovery 279

they displayed a particle of fear — it was sim-
ply not in them to move rapidly, and to face
joyfully great dangers. With them, when
mental processes failed to subdue, there was
not much left. They could have conquered
a modern warship, provided they could have
come in contact with its officers, by control-
ling in some strange way the minds of those
men; but against a storm, or the course of
inanimate nature in any other direction,
they were as powerless as any other people,
and their sense of powerlessness was paralyz-
ing to them. On the other hand, Pym and
Peters had sprung from races that had in the
past thousand years gone through hundreds
of struggles, amid every kind of danger, for
existence; and Peters, on the mother's side,
she being an American Indian, belonged
to a race v/hich had gone through what
was infinitely worse than a barbarian in-
vasion — namely, a ' civilized ' and ' enlight-
ened ' invasion. These two men seemed to
court danger — to revel in it; but in reality
they pursued the course which exposed them
to the least risk of injury consistent with the
performance of their full duty. The ques-
tion was one of method in procedure to save
the greatest number of lives; and they hast-
ened first to the residence of Lilama's uncle
and cousin — to the home of the Duke and
Diregus.

The Nineteenth Chapter

A RRIVING there, they found the
/\ Duke and Diregus quite actively
/ % engaged — ^for Hili-lites; still, very
much valuable time was being
wasted. Already the snow had
ceased to fall, and the temperature, Peters
thinks, must have reached ten degrees below
freezing, and was rapidly falling. In the
ducal palace there were, in two or three
rooms, hearths, and flue-openings for carry-
ing ofif smoke; but as there was no wood
ready for burning, and as there seemed to be
no dry wood in sight, the Duke and his son
were at the end of their resources as soon as
they had gathered together into a safe place
food sufficient to last for a week or ten days.
Fortunately the palace was unusually well
stocked with edibles.

" When Pym and Peters arrived, their
cool manner and prompt action exhaling
confidence with every look and movement,
2S0

A Strange Discovery 281

the Duke and Diregus were soon enlivened,
as in fact were all others who came in con-
tact with these two active and intrepid
strangers.

" Pym glanced about him, compassing at
a look all possible resources. Then he issued
his orders, himself working with the others,
and, so to speak, ' setting the pace.' In ten
minutes a large outbuilding — similar to our
summer-houses, or Anglo-Saxon kiosks —
was razed to the ground, broken in pieces,
and placed in the rooms, in which fires were
soon glowing and crackling. In twenty
minutes, those whom Pym and Peters had
found half-frozen and wholly discouraged,
were cheerful, comfortable, and out of dan-
ger.

" The two men hastened forth through
the city, giving assistance and advice, and in-
fusing confidence. The smaller residences,
as well as many of those of medium size, were
constructed of wood. Pym went rapidly
through the city, ordering that one house in
each square be demolished, and the wood
divided — but haste ! haste ! The tempera-
ture was rapidly declining to a point at which
a Hili-lite, even when actively at work, could
not exist.

" Pym and Peters might, unaided, have
reached one-tenth of the people of Hili-li,

282 A strange Discovery

and have shown them the way to safety.
As many more, possibly, might have found
other means of saving themselves. It seems
improbable that more than one-fourth of the
people of Hili-li would have survived this
terrible storm, had Pym and Peters not
been reinforced.

" Let no man, in his finite weakness, ever
question the methods of Infinite Wisdom,
which is Infinite Goodness. At the very
time when every moment gained by Pym
and Peters meant the saving of a hundred
more lives — at the very moment when two
additional men, hardy and inured to danger,
would have doubled the life-saving force,
four hundred of the ' Exiles of Olympus '
arrived in the city. They had left behind
them warmth and safety, and sailing across
thirty miles of tempestuous sea, had come,
headed by Medosus, to try to save their
fellow-countrymen. These four hundred
men, young and vigorous, comprised the real
enterprise and daring of Hili-li. They had
been promised their liberty, and their visits,
individually, to Hili-li had recently been not
only allowed but even encouraged by those
in authority; but the final act permitting
them to return had been, by the formalities
of state, delayed.

" Pym, Peters, and Medosus consulted

A Strange Discovery 283

for a moment, and then the exiles divided
into a hundred parties of four each, and sys-
tematically scattered through the city, do-
ing the work of giants. Finally the exiles
established a hundred stations, selecting for
the purpose large rooms, in which they built
hearths of lava-blocks taken from the streets,
in most of the houses the hearths being
placed in the centre of an upper room, and
an opening directly above cut through the
roof. At each of these stations one exile
at a time took charge of the fire, whilst the
other three of the party in charge scoured
the neighborhood for persons that might
in the first desultory search have been
overlooked. Then, when all seemed pro-
vided for, the exiles, protecting their bodies
with such additional clothing as those now
cared for could spare, went forth in search
of food, to the deserted houses, and to such
depots of supply as the city possessed.

" The work of rescue being thoroughly in-
augurated, Pym had a moment in which his
mind might roam from the work immedi-
ately in hand; and he thought of the aged
mystic, Masusselili. The old man resided in a
spot so retired that the various rescue parties
might easily have overlooked him; and the
temperature was now probably fifty degrees
below freezing. Fortunately, at the instant

284 A Strange Discovery

he thought of the old .philosopher, he and
Peters were near the city limits, and within
a third of a mile of Masusaslili's home; and
starting ofif at a brisk run, the two were five
minutes later in the old man's house, stand-
ing outside his laboratory door. As the two
had hurried along, Peters would continue to
murmur against the project: ' What's the
use,' he would growl; 'we'll only find the
old fellow roasting himself in front of a
magic fire of burning snow or ice. He's all
right, and we'd better be saving human
people.'

" As several raps, increasing from the gen-
tlest to the most vigorous, elicited no re-
sponse, Pym opened the laboratory door,
and with Peters entered. But the old man
was nowhere to be seen. Pym hastily re-
turned to the hallway, and discovering a stair
leading to a small cellar, he descended. The
cellar was filled with debris, two small win-
dow casements opening to the exterior air
were broken and decayed to the last degree
of dilapidation, and the icy wind whistled
through the rubbish of the doleful spot.
He ran back to the laboratory, where
Peters was hunting about, hoping to find
Masusaelili alive, yet fearing to find his
emaciated form lying lifeless amid the mass
of chemical and mechanical appliances which

A Strange Discovery 28^

littered the room. Several of the large
vase-like objects before alluded to stood
here and there; and as the smaller of them
might have hidden the body of a large-
sized man, the searchers even glanced into
them. Each vase sat apart upon the floor,
flaring upward like a giant lily to a height of
four or five feet ; and from each of them pro-
jected, within an inch of the floor, a faucet of
rude construction, through which passed a
very primitive spigot. One of these enor-
mous vases, large enough to have secreted
two small men, stood inverted; and Pym,
with no particular object in view, but simply
because he could not think of anything else
to do, gave the vase a push, in such a way as
to raise for an inch or two from the floor its
large rim, flaring out to a diameter of prob-
ably four feet.

" ' Put that down,' came a hollow and
stridulous voice, so unexpected and star-
tling to Pym that he withdrew his hand,
allowing the vase to drop back to the floor
with a resounding thud.

" ' If thou hast aught of importance to im-
part,' continued the voice — that of Masusse-
lili — still stridulous, but now having also the
quality possessed by a voice heard through
a speaking-tube, ' put thy mouth near to the
spigot-hole, and disclose thine errand.'

286 A Strange Discovery

" Pym placed his lips within an inch of the
open faucet, which was only an inch or two
lower than his mouth as he stood beside the
vase, and from the opening of which came a
fog-like vapor, similar in appearance to that
exhaled from the mouth and nostrils on a
very cold day, and said:

" ' We came, sir, to ofifer our help — to pro-
cure for you wood, and, if possible, food; or,
if you should so prefer, to remove you in
safety to comfortable quarters.'

" For a moment there was silence, during
which the fog-like vapor continued to come
from the spigot-hole of the inverted vase.
Then the voice of the aged mystic was again
heard in reply:

" ' Youth — and thine ape-like companion
— go hence. Through three and fifty of these
storms have I safely passed. Beneath this
vase have I two lamps, alight ; oil wherewith
to supply with fuel these two lamps for a
space of eight days, which hitherto has been
the longest duration of any of these periodi-
cal storms ; food and water have I sufficient
for my body's wants for a week. And, too,
have I mental aliment; for have I here a
manuscript written by the youthful sage,
^^gyptus, who sent it to me by the hand of
Azza, long before the legend of Romulus
started from its mj^thic source to float adown

A Strange Discovery 287

the stream of time: a manuscript which it
delighteth my soul once in each century to
peruse. Fear not for one who knows no
fear. Go hence, and quickly go — go with
humiliation in thy heart; for thou hast not
yet begun to live, and yet thou presumest
to think in danger one who helped to plan
and to construct what thou callest the an-
cient city of Babylon. Youth, when thou
didst disturb me, I was reading from my
friend, who writes from a village called Sak-
karah, of how a foolish Pharaoh thinks to
perpetuate his memory by building a mighty
pyramidal structure of stone, which my
friend terms a device planned by himself to
divert the fancy of his ruler, and incidentally
to astonish those European barbarians who
may happen that way; and, among other
matters, this Azza asks for my opinion con-
cerning the outer surface of his pyramid; to
which request for advice I remember that I
replied, saying that the walls should be
constructed so as to ascend in step-like
angles. Ha, ha, ha ! ' came from the spigot-
hole a hollow, cracked attempt at derisive
laughter — * Ye say — ha, ha ! — ye say this
Pharaoh was of the iirst dynasty ! — ha, ha ! —
the first! Go hence, vain child.'

" ' But, sir,' insisted Pym, after a pause,
' have you provided for ventilating your —
your small apartment? '

288 A Strange Discovery

" * In the floor .beneath me is a knot-hole,
which doth open to the outer air; and upon
the opening is a flat stone, which, little by-
little, more or less, I remove and replace in
accordance with certain laws, allowing just
the proper amount of atmospheric air to
enter from below. This oil maketh very-
little smoke, yet seest thou not some smoke
emerge from the open faucet? Feel'st thou
not with thine hand the heat escape? Again
I say, go hence, vain youth.'

" Pym stood for a moment, meditating;
and then something — perhaps something
connected with the words several months
before whispered into his ear by Masusaelili
— impelled him to say:

" ' Good sir, we meant you no harm. Tell
me, Allwise One, can you read the future? '

" Before a reply came, there was a pause
so long that, says Peters, Pym was about to
speak again. Then came the voice of this
old man who had investigated and pondered
for thousands of years that only inexhausti-
ble study in the universe, the phenomenon of
consciousness — the aged mystic no doubt
being pleasantly warmed and mollified by
the appellation ' Allwise One.'

" ' None but God,' said Masus^lili,
' knows of a certainty the future. Truly
wise men, and the lower animals, when they

A Strange Discovery 289

would penetrate the future, use not the
crude instrument termed reason; but rather
do they nestle close to the bosom of — what
now call ye Him? Thine ancestors, the
barbarians of Britannia, when I was with
them, named Him God. Thus, and only
thus, may the future become known to thee.
Have faith, as the bird, the fish, the little ant,
which, feeling God, act, and are not disap-
pointed. Think ye that the lowest of God's
creatures would not have heard His warning
voice, or seen His beckoning arm, or felt
His guiding hand when in the air lurked this
present danger? Yet reason told not you!
God shows to us the future, when we should
know His edicts in advance, always — always,
if only we will look and hearken. But this,
good youth, God doth permit only to those
who lean with full confidence upon Him,
as do the lower animals. To the conscious-
ness of man it is given, if but the right
conditions be attained, truly to know what
in the present happeneth anywhere in the
universe. Time is a barrier to the voluntary
acquisition of knowledge, but distance is
not an impediment. My body is confined
to this poor vase, but certainly not my mind
— it roams in Europe, in Asia, or amid the
stars — but wait a moment. Poor youth!
The hand on the dial of thy destiny moves

290 A Strange Discovery

rapidly. Go! Go now, and go in haste;
for one who loves thee, at this moment
sorely needs thee. ' Farewell.'

" Pym scarcely heard the word ' farewell;'
for he was crossing the threshold of the
house as Masusselili uttered it, and Peters
was turning to follow. They ran as rapidly
as the snow and the cutting wind would per-
mit, and had covered the necessary three
miles in about half an hour. The air was
growing intensely cold. They met a party
of three exiles, who were helping to, scour
the city for any food that might have been
left in deserted homes. These men informed
Pym that, in spite of the promptitude and
haste of the rescue parties, more than a hun-
dred persons had been frozen to death; and
that frozen hands and feet by the thou-
sand had been reported. The Hili-lites
were so extremely susceptible to cold that,
at a temperature of 20° Fahrenheit, if
they were not well protected by cloth-
ing, they soon became drowsy, then slept,
and, if not found and resuscitated within a
very short time, died. One case was re-
ported in which a woman, only six hundred
feet from one of the rescue stations, was
frozen to death in somewhat less than an
hour, though she must have been thor-
oughly chilled when last seen in an ap-

A Strange Discovery 291

parently natural condition. During the day
a party of three exiles, whilst on one of their
rounds, had visited the house of this poor
woman, and had carried her three children to
the nearest station ; and the woman herself,
who was at the time hurrying about the
room gathering together a few articles, it
was supposed had followed close behind
them. In this way she was overlooked,
until, in the somewhat crowded room to
which the children were taken, the youngest
child, a little girl of four years, broke into
tears and began to cry out for her mother.
Then two men hastened back, and found the
woman unconscious and apparently dead.
The usual methods of resuscitation were in-
augurated, and long continued, but the
woman could not be revived.

" Peters says that he has during his life-
time seen a number of persons who were
frozen, several of them fatally; of which a
part were in the Eastern States, others in the
far north; and that these Hili-lites froze to
death very differently from those in the
northern part of the north temperate zone.
He mentions the case of a Canadian who
was exposed to extreme cold during a whole
night. When found, the poor fellow was
not only unconscious, but apparently dead.
The arms and legs were frozen through and

292 A Strange Discovery

through, and the entire body was rigid.
He was resuscitated, but afterwards lost his
hands and feet. In Hili-li persons lost their
lives from exposure to cold whose bodies
were very little — z. few of them not at all —
frozen. The explanation of this difiference
is to be found in the fact that an animal dies
when bodily temperature in the interior of
the body reaches a certain degree of reduc-
tion, which point of reduction in the Hili-
lites is much less than in persons habituated
to life in a colder climate. In persons ac-
customed to a climate as warm as that of
Hili-li, the heat-producing functions are
feeble, and the heat-expelling functions are
very active; but this does not fully explain
why, in Peters' words, ' the people there
froze to death without freezing.' Any per-
son dying as a result of exposure to cold,
dies long before any of the vital organs are
frozen ; and the Hili-lites no doubt ceased to
live with a reduction of bodily temperature
which would not have seriously inconven-
ienced a resident of Scotland or Canada.
In the storm of which we speak, the people
were nervously depressed as a result of
fright. However, from all I can gather,
the temperature was at times certainly as low
as 40° Fahrenheit below freezing, at which
degree almost any thinly clad person might
freeze to death.

A Strange Discovery 293

" But the hour is late, and, though I had
expected to close Peters' story this evening,
such a conclusion is, owing to my prolixity,
scarcely practicable. If you still expect to
start for home in three days, I shall certainly
in one more evening complete the telling of
Peters' experiences in Hili-li. The day after
to-morrow I shall be engaged during the
entire evening, and if we delay our next
meeting till the following evening — ^your
last in Bellevue — it is possible that some-
thing may happen to prevent our meeting;
so, if you are willing, my next and last visit
to you here shall be to-morrow evening."

I expressed my satisfastion with the ar-
rangement, and he took his leave.

The following morning, I gave to Arthur,
in my own way, an account of the storm in
Hili-li, meanwhile leisurely dressing — a per-
formance which, except under pressure, I
have never in the morning been able unaided
to accomplish in less than an hour. I had
completed my toilet, but not my story, when
in rushed Castleton.

After a little general conversation, I
seemed naturally to return to the Peters
story; and now, in a five-minute talk, I so
closed it to the point reached by Bainbridge
as to satisfy Arthur, and not weary the rest-
less doctor. As I ended, Castleton said :

294 ^ Strange Discovery

" I didn't get in to See you yesterday.
The last time I was in we were talking of
names; and to tell you the truth, it was a
matter of names that held me back yesterday
at the very time I was going to come up.
You see, I have an old friend here in town,

; you've no doubt heard of him —

ex-member of Congress, and as good as ap-
pointed Minister to Venezuela right now.
A scholar of the deepest erudition; a
speaker and writer of great force and nicety,
and of exquisite literary taste. Yesterday
we met, and during our talk he told me
that his book, the result of many years of
thought, was completed. Now, for my
part, I never believed that a rose would
smell as sweet as it does if we called it a
turnip. If Poe had, instead of ' Narrative of
A. Gordon Pym,' named his story, ' Advent-
ures of Dirk Peters, the Half-Breed,' he
would have sold twice as many books. My
friend is about to publish his book. ' Its
name? ' I asked him. ' There can be little
choice of names for a translation of Mon-
tesquieu's " Grandeur and Decadence of the
Romans," with notes by myself,' he replied.
' There can't?' said I; ' well, my friend, let
me tell you there can. Now compare this
name : "Montesquieu's Considerations on the
Causes of the Grandeur and Decadence of the

A Strange Discovery 295

Romans, with illustrative notes," etc., with
a name like this : " The Roman Aristocrats
Ripped, Rooted, and Routed"; or, "How
the Roman Plutocrats were Peppered and
Pounded." Heavens and Earth! what
do the masses know about decadence ?
Why not name his book (and so I said to
him), ' How the Rich Romans Rotted ' ?
Half the people would think from such a
title that the Romans were enemies of the
United States, and that Montesquieu and
my friend were after them hot and fast; and
then the story would go out that the
French were helping us again. ' General
Montesquieu ' would be heard on all sides,
associated with endless repetitions of La-
fayette memories. Lord, Lord! I some-
times think a man is better under-educated
than over-educated."

Then after a pause he continued:
" Pretty good, that talk of Masusselili's
through the faucet — pretty good, pretty
good! But, pshaw! for me there's nothing
new on earth. Why, sir, I've always drawn
my best philosophy out of a spigot-hole.
The very sight of a spigot inspires me, and
drives away my troubles. But, man alive!
we must keep this thing secret. The fellow
with an exhaustless stock of elixir vitcB isn't
half worked out in fiction yet — and besides,

A Strange Discovery 297

active owing to their thermic environment,
and the thermotaxic balance being habitual-
ly anomalous, the emergency was not suc-
cessfully encountered; and this was more
particularly the case because the nerve-cen-
tres of vital resistance to sudden and extreme
thermal abstraction were atrophied."

This was the last remark, except a few
words of farewell at the time of my departure
for home, that I ever heard from Doctor
Castleton. It was his habit, as he was about
to leave the presence of an auditor or inter-
locutor, to fire off, so to speak, a set speech,
or a piece of surprising information, and then
hastily to retreat — a habit displaying con-
siderable sagacity, and one engendered by
street-corner discussion, in which a return
fire — or perhaps a troublesome question —
was often to be avoided if a dramatic climax
was not to be sacrificed. On this occasion,
as the last words left his lips he vanished
through the doorway, and we were alone.

" Well," said Arthur, " am I allowed to
speak ? "

" You are," I replied.

" Then tell me," said he, " what it was he
said? Why doesn't he, some day when he
has time, dictate a dictionary? And isn't
there any way to stop such talk by law?
That man gets worse instead of better. He

298 A Strange Discovery

forgets everything except words. Says he,
the other day, ' Well, Arthur, my boy, when
are you coming in to pay your doctor bill? '
Now mind, I paid him a'ready, and just
think of my teeth! But I told him, nice
and easy, how I paid him the two dollars.
Then I told him about my teeth rattlin'
whenever I go down the stairs, and asked
him what to do for them. He just laughed
and gave me a half-dollar, and said, ' Bone-
set tea, my boy — drink bone-set tea, and
plenty of it; ' and so I do."

The Twentieth Chapter

PYM left the exiles," said Bainbridge,
on the following evening, as, in ac-
cordance with his engagement, he
continued the story of the great
storm in Hili-li; "and hastened on
toward his home. Arrived there, he went
directly to the cellar, where he found the
three large lamps alight, brilliantly illumina-
ting and comfortably warming the apart-
ment; but Lilama was missing, though he
found there one of her maids. This girl
told Pym that Lilama had, some four hours
earlier, taken with her her maid Ixza, and
hastened from the house. Questioned
closely, she said that after Pym had gone,
Lilama suddenly bethought her of a for-
mer servant, an old nurse, who for some
years past had lived quite alone, and that Lil-
ama had decided to have the poor old
woman found, and cared for. It seems that
when the young wife was herself in safety

299

300 A Strange Discovery

and had the mental leisure to think of others,
the thought of her poor old servant and
friend in danger grew more and more un-
bearable. She had waited almost an hour
for Pym to return, and then, taking Ixza
with her, had gone forth ; but where the old
nurse resided, only Lilama and Ixza knew.
The maid knew only that Lilama had left
the cellar with the intention of assisting, in
some manner, the nurse of her babyhood.

" In ten minutes Pym and Peters, going
in different directions, had aroused many of
the exiles, who hastened in all directions, to
search thoroughly the poorer quarters of the
city, and to inquire of everyone whom they
might encounter concerning the residence of
the old nurse. The exiles had already vis-
ited, or sent others to visit, about every
house in the city; but in a few instances —
particularly where but one person lived in a
house — the occupant had been advised, and
had consented, to come to a central station
and there remain till the storm abated or
passed; and then, for some purpose delay-
ing, had been overcome by the cold, and, as
the system of search included only one visit
to each house, had been left to die — the fact
transpiring through an accidental second
visit, or when the city was later scoured in
search of food that might have been over-
looked.

A Strange Discovery 301

" An hour later, one of many messen-
gers who were searching for Pym met him,
and told him that Lilama was found. He
hastened to the house in which they had
found her — a small frame structure, the
residence of her former nurse.

" At the entrance of this house stood
Peters, waiting for his young friend ; and as
Pym felt the hand of the old sailor, put forth
to stop him in his breathless haste, and as he
looked into the hard, rugged face of his old
friend, he knew that he must nerve himself
for a shock. Alas ! his surmise was only too
correct. They entered the main room of the
house together, Peters in the rear. Draw-
ing aside from the entrance to the room a
portiere — Peters had already visited the
room — Pym passed in, Peters remaining on
the outer side of the curtained doorway, that
he might prevent others from following, or
even from viewing the young friend who was
now to receive one of the keenest stabs with
which Destiny ever pierces the human heart.

" For a moment Pym would wholly have
mistaken the scene before him, had Peters
not said a word of warning as the portiere fell
behind his young friend.

" On the lounge which stood against the
farther wall as he entered, lay an elderly
woman, apparently asleep; and covering her

302 A Strange Discovery

were the outer wraps — scanty, indeed, for
such a day — of Lilama. On the left, as
Pym swept at a glance the apartment, he saw
the maid Ixza, reclining in a large chair; she,
also, to all appearances, was asleep. Then
he saw his wife. She crouched on the floor
at the foot of the lounge, only her wealth of
light golden hair at first visible. Stepping
to her side, Pym saw her, as many times in
the ducal gardens he had seen her drop to
the ground in her girlish fashion, to rest.
Her arms were intertwined upon the foot of
the lounge, her head resting upon them;
and there the tired, childlike young wife had
gone to sleep — forever.

" How beautiful she was in death! The
gentle hand that had never touched the per-
son of another but in helpfulness — how fair,
how pallid; the fond sweet eyes that knew
no glance but that of love and kindness —
they were almost hidden by the drooping
lids; the tenderest, loveliest face the sun-
light ever kissed, smiled upward at him as
he gazed — his heart felt colder than was this
dear form he dropped beside and clasped.
But the lips — the ripe red lips — the raptur-
ous, maidenly lips, the first touch of which
had raised him forever from the coarse earth
— the arch lips that had bewitched him
with their own seductive smile, and could

A Strange Discovery 303

not shape themselves to harsher act than
pouting — a fleeting pout, that captivated
ere it vanished — he could not look at them
in death — ^he could not.

" Sweet child of a weird land and a strange
people! She was one of those whose spot-
less souls need not the purifying fire of a long
earthly life. For Pym, now and later, the
sorrow and the yearning void; for her, only
an earlier advancement.

" Pym's mind was shocked; but behind
the shock he felt the awful anguish of such
a separation. Was this the end? Could it
be the end? For him, truly that day his
last hope for this life died. But hereafter?
Surely this was not to be the end of all! A
few more years of grovelling on the clay
bosom of the cold, selfish earth, and then —
only oblivion? No, no: he would not, he
could not believe it.

" As Pym stood there, where many, many
other men have stood; and millions yet will
stand, did his soul rise into the heavenly at-
mosphere, or did it question God's decrees
and sink to rise no more? This I cannot
answer.

" After such a loss, oh, the weary weight of
unutterable woe; the awful sense that hope
is dead, whilst the mourner can only stand
with streaming eyes and bleeding heart, for-

304 A Strange Discovery

ever chained to the ghastly corpse of every
dear ambition, of every joy, and all that our
universe of feeling builds on hope. But we
should learn from such a loss a lesson, for the
lesson if learned insures our own advance-
ment: such losses are but the purposes of
God unfolding for those we love and for our-
selves an eternity of blissful harmony."

Thus Doctor Bainbridge closed; and,
though his words were of death, and the
thoughts which he expressed were as old as
the human race, I was much afifected by
them. Young as was the speaker, his utter-
ances conveyed to me the impression that
he himself had in some way learned the
lesson of which he spoke. For several mo-
ments we sat in silence; and then, though I
knew that he would have a few more words
to say, I thought it an appropriate time to
thank him for his long, painstaking elabora-
tion of the old sailor's disclosures, which, as
I knew partly from my own personal knowl-
edge, had been gained only by untiring per-
severance and inexhaustible patience. I
thanked him, and complimented him as I
thought he deserved; and he was pleased, I
plainly saw, with the few words of com-
mendation which he knew came from my
heart.

We sat, smoking our cigars and chatting

A Strange Discovery 305

on various topics, until it was almost the
hour at which he usually said to me good-
night. Then he returned to the Peters'
story, saying:

" It only remains for me properly to dis-
pose of Pym and Peters. Peters knows no
more — in fact, not as much — of Pym after
he returned home, as do we. Poe, we
know, in the note to his ' Narrative,' alludes
to ' the late sudden and distressing death of
Mr. Pym.' This is all we know, and even
this fact, when I told it to Peters, was new to
him; for Pym and Peters parted in the
month of February, 1830, at the City of
Montevideo, Uruguay; Peters, with an old
sailor chum, whom he happened to meet in
South America, shipping to Austraha; and
Pym, a few days later, starting for the United
States.

" It had no doubt been the policy of the
Hili-Htes to prevent all strangers from re-
turning to the outer world; but this policy
was, it seems, not a firmly founded one, and
many circumstances arose to modify and
finally even to reverse it. They looked upon
Pym almost as one of themselves. When
he left them, it was with the intention of re-
turning; and they exacted of him a promise
to hide, even from Peters, the longitudes
traversed during the entire journey from

3o6 A Strange Discovery

Hili-li until they should touch the land of
some civilized people, or meet with a ship;
to which promise Pym rigidly adhered.
And though they were in other ways very
kind to him, they would not allow him to
take away a single grain of gold, of which
nuggets were as plentiful in the fissures
of the Olympian ranges as are pebbles
in the beds of mountain streams; nor would
they allow him to retain, of the many
precious stones in his possession, even
the ruby which Lilama had given him;
and no amount of argument or pleading
could move them to a dififerent decision.
The Hili-lites were anxious to get rid of
Peters, which had much to do with their
willingness to ' speed the parting guest.' It
seems that Pym for months after the death
of Lilama was in an extremely morbid state
of mind. He spent most of his time with
Masusselili, who allowed him to see Lila-
ma's apparition or wraith many times.
The aged mystic explained to Pym the
scientific modus operandi of the production,
so that he was in no way deceived into
thinking that he met Lilama in person; but
we may presume that, as it is to each of us
some gratification to look at a painting or
a photograph of a departed friend, it must
have been a still greater pleasure for Pym

A Strange Discovery 307

thus to have reproduced for him the living,
moving form and features of his lost darling
— reproduced or simulated in such a manner
that he might see her, and touch her, and
hear her voice^ — even though he was told
that the image was only a likeness. During
Pym's abstraction, Peters was left almost en-
tirely to himself; and his worst qualities,
long inactive (partly because there had not
been opportunity for their display, and partly
because of Pym's influence),now came prom-
inently to the surface. He associated with
the wildest characters on the neighboring
islands, making them even wilder and more
ungovernable than before his arrival. Fi-
nally, with revenge for an excuse, but in re-
ality from sheer restlessness, he began to
organize a raid on the outlying barbarians,
more particularly, he still avers, because he
wished ' to get even with old Too-wit ' and
his barbarian followers for having murdered
his companions, as described in Pym's diary.
This the Hili-lites thought was going too
far; and as it was now October, the Council
of State decided to allow Pym to depart for
home, taking Peters with him.

"One bright December morning these two
toys of fortune said good-by to their kind
hosts, and started on their long and perilous
journey. A strong and handsome though

3o8 A Strmige Discovery

small sail-boat had been provided for them.
A number of Hili-lite youths — among them
some of the former exiles — were to accom-
pany them past the great antarctic continent ;
and for this piloting party a larger boat had
been built. After many days, the continent
was passed; and Pym and Peters, alone, be-
gan their wearisome voyage across the great
Antarctic Ocean. Fortunately, in January
they encountered a large schooner, which
six weeks later, in February, landed them at
Montevideo. Peters says that Montevideo
was at that time — 1830 — little more than a
walled fortress. This scarcely harmonizes
v/ith the fact that it was then, as now, the
capital of Uruguay; but Peters appears to
know what he is talking about. As I have
said, at this place Pym and Peters parted,
never to meet again. The younger man
started for his home, and found an early
grave; the older man sought new advent-
ures, and he, at the age of eighty, still lives
to tell of their adventures had in a country
strange beyond man's credulity to believe."
These were the last words spoken by
Doctor Bainbridge on the subject of Peters'
adventures. Two days later I said farewell
to my American friends, the memory of
whom has always been dear to me, and
whom it has been my misfortune not again

A Strange Discovery 309

to meet. The day before my departure, I
drove to Peters' home, and said to him good-
by. I called on Doctor Bainbridge at his
office; and Doctor Castleton I met on the
street corner, where, from the window of my
apartment in the Loomis House, I had first
seen him. I hope that the later life of each
of them has been a smooth one : I know that
both were good men, and that one of them
was a man of singular, fascination.

As I took my leave of Doctor Castleton,
and after he had spoken of the death of
Lilama, he said :

" I trust, young man, that you are pleased
with your discovery — I know that Bain-
bridge is;" and he accompanied the remark
with a searching glance of those large black
eyes, the meaning of which I could not then
fathom, and the recollection of which has
often puzzled me. Then he smiled, and said
farewell.

Doctor Bainbridge, when I had said my
last words to him, spoke thus:

" May you have a pleasant journey, and a
loving welcome to your home. You will
probably never return to America — or, even
if you do, not to our little city. I wish I
could think that some day we shall meet
again, but we probably never shall. And
yet," he continued, smilingly, " who knows!

310 A Strange Discovery

If not again in this life, or in this world,
still in some new form, on some strange
planet. It may be that on Venus the beau-
tiful our hands shall once more clasp; or on
some water-way of Mars the ruddy, as we
pass in our gondolas, we may call a greeting
to each other — or possibly to Poe, the bright
unfortunate. I am sorry that you must
leave us, and I wish you every happiness."

It was at the railroad station, to which his
duties called him, that I said to Arthur good-
by; and there, as the train pulled out,
through the car-window I caught a glimpse
of two moist eyes looking after the departing
train.

And now, to the patient reader, I say fare-
well.

THE END

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